Over 90% of people who come to me and talk to me about their business, say to me that if they were to get one thing, they want clarity.
Clarity is such a nice feeling, right? You know when you get clear… when the penny drops, when you have that ‘aha moment’, that light bulb moment – it’s a good feeling.
But it’s more than just a good feeling. It’s crucial in business.
So why is clarity so crucial?
Well, the first reason is – if you don’t have clarity about what you want to do in your business – about who your ideal client is, what you’re offering, how you’re showing up in the world, you can’t plan.
And if you don’t have a plan, you can feel really lost, right?
I’m sure you know that feeling where you just feel lost, you feel overwhelmed, you feel confused, and once you get that clarity feeling of “Oh, that’s what I need to do, that’s what I’ve been missing.”
You think – “Okay, now I can plan”.
When you have a plan, you can share your plan with other people.
So in order to be able to share with other business owners, with coaches, with friends, with your community, online, with people that you’re talking to in person – if you can’t articulate your vision to them, then you’re not going to go very far in business.
To be able to clearly articulate, this is who I am, this is what I do, these are the kinds of people I serve. You can use this in multiple places. How many of you are on Facebook, Facebook Groups where people say “Hey, what do you do?”
And you kind of fumble your way through it.
I’ve seen this a few times where people kind of ramble and they give this big waffle because they haven’t put time into getting clear on who they are, who they serve, what they offer, what they do.
I see this when I go networking too, people give a convoluted answer and start talking about the method, but they’re not clear on the result.
They don’t have clarity on “This is who I am, this is what I do in the world and these are my goals.”
The other why clarity is so important is because the lack of clarity is bad for our mental health.
When you don’t have clarity and you’re not clear and things are like you’re going through this bush and there’s no clear path. Our brain is always looking for patterns, right? It’s always looking to put things together.
When we’re not giving our brain clarity, it lives in this fight or flight state like this cortisol pumping out, because your brain is trying to look for patterns, but you don’t have clarity.
That can be stressful.
I remember when I didn’t have any clarity about who my ideal client was.
I thought that I was serving all these different types of people and I had a lot of fear around niching. A lot of fear about people missing out. All these people that I could help wouldn’t be helped.
I remember not wanting people to not come to my events if I said that it was just the service-based business owners, that all these people who have products that I could probably help them with.
I could help them with presenting, marketing, communication skills – there were lots of things I can help them with.
Yet I knew that I was doing a dis-service to all the service providers, all the coaches and the people who provided a service to people if I didn’t get good at just serving them.
The first time I put on a workshop and I said who it’s not for, and I listed all the people who it’s not for and actually brought up a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. And I didn’t like it, because my brain was more comfortable with this bigger group of people.
But I had to push through that threshold almost go into a portal and come out the other side and go, I can help more people by niching.
When I got that clarity, I decided that I help service-based entrepreneurs to grow a profitable business to get to a hundred grand a year, those are my people.
So much relief came from that and it was almost like the damn open and all these ideas started flowing through and then I could start really targeting and helping these people and getting a great result for these specific people.
I know a lot of you, you struggle with niche and going to tight because it can be a little bit scary, but I encourage you to make those decisions, to get the clarity in your business that you need.
Some of you don’t even know what kind of business you want yet you haven’t launched a business.
I think you are convinced of the importance of clarity and direction.
So, let’s talk about how to get it.
There were three questions that I asked myself that helped me have massive clarity and I’d love you to write these down and use these questions.
Here are the three questions to ask yourself:
1. What makes me most fulfilled and happy?
Most of us know this, but we don’t always give ourselves permission to do it. So, a lot of people who say to me, I just don’t know what I’m passionate about. I don’t know what makes me happy.
I would question that, because often we have layers of conditioning from society, people who have told us what we should want or what makes sense based on our talents and our skills or what we good at as a kid.
Just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean you should do it.
I’m good at playing the drums. It doesn’t mean that I should be a drum teacher.
I’m good at moving countries. It doesn’t mean that I want to teach people that.
Just because you’re good at something and you’ve got talent around it doesn’t mean it’s fulfilling.
I was not good at speaking when I started, but speaking made me so fulfilled.
Getting up in front of a group made me so fulfilled and happy. I just had believed this lie that I wouldn’t be good at it because I’m an introvert. So, it’s just this massive lie that I believed.
I believe deep down I knew that I wanted to get up on stage and talk to people, but all these fears and limiting beliefs came up because my brain was trying to keep me at those safe things.
Maybe for me, it wasn’t video games, but it was other things like going to the gym every night instead of maybe stepping out of my comfort zone and doing something different.
When you really go, okay, what makes me fulfilled and happy, regardless of what my mom said, my schoolteachers, said, my friends say, my clients, say, regardless of what anyone says.
For me it was speaking, coaching, training, being a thought leader, having my own business. And no one really said to me, Oh, you should be a business owner Kat. No one really suggested that to me. I just had to give myself permission because it really makes me happy.
I realised that I was the kind of person that wanted to build my own dreams and not someone else’s. That makes me happy. That’s not for everyone. Not everyone is wired to want to have their own business.
And if you are more of a team player and you don’t want to take that risk because it is hard work, then maybe it’s not the right path for you. And that’s totally okay, right? To go, what makes me fulfilled and happy. So that’s question one.
2. What difference do I want to make in the world?
What do I want to leave here as a legacy when I’m gone?
How do I want to make the world a better place? Who are the people that I can best serve and grow and contribute to? Because that’s going to give your life meaning, right?
If you’re just searching for your happiness and you’re not actually thinking how my passion and my gifts and skills, and experience could help other people because we’re all wired for contribution.
Once we’ve got the recognition and significance in the certainty and those things in place that make us feel good, once we’ve kind of got there, we need more.
That’s why successful people are often philanthropic because they get all the money that they want and then they ask what next? Most of them don’t just retire and sit under a tree. They’re usually doing bigger projects, helping more people.
So, get clear on what difference do you want to make in the world.
For me, I want to help loads and loads of small business owners and passionate business entrepreneurs and to create freedom and never have to work again if they don’t want to, to create six-figure businesses to be able to travel the world.
That’s the difference that I want to make. I want to encourage thought leaders to have a voice.
I want to help women to be able to sell better and stand on stage and own their power more. I want to help all small business owners to be able to attract a tribe to set up a business that they, love, that they can still have a lifestyle that’s the difference that I want to make in the world.
What’s the difference you want to make in the world?
3. What do I feel wired to do?
What do I feel called to do? And I know for some of you that might sound a bit, woo woo language, what do I feel called to do? If you look at the movies, you know, most of these heroes, they have a calling, the call comes.
If you’ve investigated the hero’s journey and you’ve watched movies like Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Wonder Woman, they get this call and they just feel called to it.
And I got the call when I was watching speakers, I was going to conventions and conferences. I was watching these speakers. I was like, I got called. It’s like this is what I want to do. I want to be that one up on stage, influencing people, having a bigger impact using the one-on-one model that I was stuck in.
What do you feel uniquely wired for? I knew that I was wired to be a leader. I knew that I was wired to be a business owner at a very young age.
As a kid, I used to go doorknocking and offer to do things for people in exchange for money. I even knocked on my neighbour’s door and she said, “Oh yeah, I need to rake my leaves around my pool.”
And me and my friends spent two hours raking her leaves and we didn’t negotiate the terms.
I hadn’t quite learned that. I remember she gave us an apple each and a 20-cent coin each for two hours work. And I mean, this is probably 1985 but still 20 cents…
I remember walking out of there smoke coming out of my ears. Going “I got ripped off”, but I knew I was always wired and called for doing my own thing, whatever that was. I didn’t know what it was. It didn’t have clarity on it. I just knew that’s what I wanted.
Clarity is like a snowball. You know, you don’t get this blinding flash and everything’s crystal clear and that’s it. The more clarity you get, the more it builds like a snowball.
You’ve got to step out, act, get a little bit of clarity, keep moving, a little bit more clarity. And as I keep learning, investing in myself, researching, as I’m sure you are. As you seek out mentors, as you go to more courses, as you research, as you study, clarity keeps coming as you keep moving.
Here are three quick actions that you can take to help you get clarity straight away:
1. Focus on what you already have clarity about
You already know things that you are crystal clear on. You might say, I never, ever want to work as a construction worker. You’ve got clarity on that. You might say, I never ever want to work for this specific person ever again.
Sometimes visiting the things that you already have clarity on. I did this nightmare job activity. I read this really cool book called “I could do whatever I want, If only I knew what it was”- by Barbara Sher that my sister loaned me, and she had this really cool activity where you work at your nightmare job.
And for me, it would be stuck in an office with grey walls and stressful phone ringing or working on the road in the middle of the night all these things that I would hate to do.
And you can write a list of the things that you really don’t want to do. And through a process of elimination of what you don’t want.
The things that you know you can get closer to a yes. So, that’s helpful. Focus on what you do know, the things that you never ever want to do. And that will start to bring up some of the things that you do want by default.
2. Revisit your values
Come back to those things that are important to you. If you sit down and write what’s most important to me in life.
I did this with a client today. What’s most important to you in life? And she said my partner, my family travel, security and achievements.
She started listing them off. And so, I said, what is it about family? Oh, it’s a connection. So, we came up with her top five values and then I said, what needs to happen for you to know that all these values are in place? Because if she’s really valuing an achievement.
She’s really valuing achievement and not getting it at her current workplace, we need to change that. Because if it’s a high value, your brain will go after it. Right?
When I figured out my top five values, which were freedom, growth, creativity, health, and love. When I worked out that those are my five top values, I realised that my current job was providing none of my top five values.
I realised, that has got to change.
Doing some values work is really, powerful because then you decide your client, your goals, you set up your whole year, you set up your whole business based on your values. You know you’re going to chase it; you know you’re going to do the hard work, right?
Because it’s aligned with your top values. It’s such a powerful exercise.
3. Write down your non-negotiables
It’s kind of like if you’re looking for a date, right? You don’t say, he must be six foot one and with brown eyes. You don’t have to be that specific.
But if you say, I wouldn’t go out with a smoker, I wouldn’t go out with someone that was a gambler, I wouldn’t go out with someone that has kids – those are your non-negotiables.
You have your maybe top five things that you want in a person.
For example, they need to be a good listener, kind and caring. They need to be willing to travel, whatever it is, right? And you do the same thing with your business. You say, who are the people I do not want to work with? And you can write almost like the opposite of an ideal client, like a nightmare client.
Someone who’s always late, they pay me late or they don’t pay me at all. They’re just really focused on money; they don’t care about people. And you just write this non-negotiable.
For example, I’m not going to work with them. I’m not going to do this type of business. I don’t want to do network marketing, or I don’t want to have a product or a shop or whatever it is.
You write down your non-negotiables and you’ll find from these three activities you will get massive clarity, like incredible clarity.
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