The One Thing That Changed My Business

Hola gorgeous hearts!

One of the things that really inspired me (+ still does) when I’m down in the salt mines of my business, trying to work out the next step, is listening to the stories of other business women who’ve been where I am + have had an insight that’s helped them along.

With that in mind, I’ve asked a number of gorgeous, inspired, soulful business women to share their sacred AHA! moment – of the thing that changed their business.

Today’s insight is for all of you A Type people out there following “the rules”, working hard, and pushing hard and knowing somewhere down deep that there might be another way.

May it give you the guidance you seek!

Lots of love,

Leonie

The Truth About Business Success

I used to think that success – and living my dream life – had to come at a high price. A price that consisted of giving my all in the name of getting ahead. Of making it. Of becoming something.

And you better believe I did my very best to get ahead that way. On top of my 50-60 hours a week of 1:1 coaching as a personal trainer I put in 30-40 hours a week building my blog.

I blogged my little heart out.

I followed all the rules, or at least the ones I knew.

I read success stories from other online entrepreneurs, modelled what I was doing on what they were doing, all the while dreaming of the time when my rewards would come in. When I’d get to live the cafe lifestyle as an entrepreneur, green smoothie on one side, coffee on the other, a yoga class behind me and a blissful morning of ‘making it’ as a writer in front of me.

If doing the hard yards led to fame and fortune, my name would have been plastered all over the internet years ago.

Instead, my battle to create my dream business and life led to absolute, exhausting burnout. Day after day I pushed myself to keep writing, keep creating, keep moving forward, keep …

Keeping up.

Of course I wasn’t keeping up at all, not even for a moment.

Have you ever felt that way?

If anything, I was falling further and further behind – becoming evermore lost and overwhelmed in the confusion of all that I should or could be doing to get ahead.

And the real price I paid was the greatest price of all. It was the price of not giving myself permission to be me. For all my efforts in keeping up and trying to do it all I forgot to do the simple things –

  • Listen in to what I really wanted for myself.
  • Consider how I would really love to be in business.
  • And what my dream life would truly entail.

When all is said and done do any of us really want to look back and see a life filled with busywork and ‘doing what we had to do’? I know I don’t. And of course it’s not necessary either, is it?

Because the truth, of course, although I couldn’t see it back then, was that creating my dream business and life depended on living it. Now. Not ‘when I’d paid my dues’.

It’s quite possible I would have stayed stuck on this wheel indefinitely. Certainly the coaches I at times paid large sums of money to reinforced the belief that getting ahead did require unending hard work, sacrifice, and a willingness to do things you are not completely aligned with if they will have a financial or otherwise ‘success orientated’ benefit.

It’s quite possible I could in fact have made it following this path. It’s quite possible that you, right this very moment, are making it this way as well. In this case by making it I mean achieving some level of fame and fortune.

But certainly not soul satisfaction.

And for me, as a go-go-go A-type kind of gal I think it’s quite likely that I would have pushed through until I got, well – somewhere, anyway.

But then –

Along came Leonie.

This beautiful, magical woman who I followed at first from afar and then more closely. Marvelling to a friend perhaps a 18 months ago that “she’s a goddamn hippy who lives in the rainforest and works about 2-3 hours a day and she’s making 60k per month! 18 months ago she was making roughly 6k per month. That’s what I’m making now, give or take! And she has a daughter around the same age as mine!”

And wondering, for the first time, if maybe it didn’t have to be so hard for me either.

I know I don’t have to tell you how magnetically Leonie draws you in. All of a sudden in a world where everybody and their coach is telling you that you DO have to keep pushing, that it DOES have to be this way and that you simply MUST pay your dues, along comes this woman who is saying –

“Well, no. Actually.”

But also, she’s telling it like it is and there’s not a hold barred. I think for me the moment when I knew I had to invest in Leonie’s work came when I first realised that she hadn’t always had it so together. That she HAD done the hard yards. Suffered. Sacrificed. Ridden some crazy-ass wild donkeys one too many times perhaps 😉

And that she’d been not only able to walk away from all of that and succeed in spite of doing so, but that she’d been able to succeed because of doing so.

Leonie taught me that I have permission to ‘do’ business and life my way.

That I CAN be me first and foremost, and that I can also be a mother and a wife and a writer and a dreamer as well as a hard-ass female entrepreneur …

and that being that successful and driven businesswoman didn’t have to mean sacrificing the essence of who I was, or of what I wanted to invite into my life.

Most of all, she taught me that true success in all the ways we really define it within ourselves, comes through authenticity.

  • I am being authentic when I take the mornings just for me. And that’s okay.
  • I am being authentic when I say no to projects that don’t make my heart sing. And that’s okay.
  • I am being authentic when I walk away, even once I’ve begun, if it doesn’t feel right. And that too is okay.
  • I am being authentic when I constantly question, demand and expect to live my true version of my dream business and life.

And anything less than that is not okay.

The power of what I’ve learned through working with Leonie – through her workbooks, her business goddess course, her Academy, retreats and coaching, and now as a friend – is that I’m not the only one out there with a crazy dream of having it all but of doing so on my terms.

I look back over the past 18 months or so and not only has my income gone from 5-6k per month online to over 50k per month online, but my entire lifestyle and the way I ‘do’ business has changed.

  • I’m less frantic.
  • I care less about what I should be doing.
  • And so much more about what I want to be doing.
  • I’m okay with quitting.
  • I’m okay with spending lazy days in the sun doing nothing, or with spending the whole day glued to my computer when I feel in that zone.

But most of all, I’m okay with being me in any old which way so long as it IS me.

My message.

My voice.

The legacy I want to create.

And the freaking-incredible business and life I know I was born to live, and that I am now living more and more each day.

I used to think that success – and living my dream life – had to come at a high price. A price that consisted of giving my all in the name of getting ahead. Of making it. Of becoming something.

And I know that right now as you read this, you may feel the same way.

But I’m here to tell you that you do have permission to be authentic. To quit. To insist on alignment.

That it doesn’t have to be so hard, and that you CAN do this.

And if you don’t believe me?

Just take a look around at what this woman has created and the legacy her work leaves everyday.

And ask yourself –

Why not me?

And why not now?

 

kat loterzo updated headshotKat Loterzo is a best-selling author, speaker and entrepreneur and can be found at www.katloterzo.com and www.womanincredible.com.

Kat built a half million dollar a year business teaching female fitness, fat loss and nutrition before moving on to pursue her true love of inspiring other women to get over their ‘stuff’ and finally start making their business and life dreams their reality.

When not writing, speaking or coaching Kat can be found hanging out in online masterminds with other female entrepreneurs, in a cafe with her journal and a pen, or kicking back with her husband, daughter and 39-week pregnant belly.

 

JUST 18 DAYS TO GO BEFORE THE AMAZING BIZ + LIFE ACADEMY PRICE DOUBLES!

(And the Business Goddess program begins!)

Get in before then to save mega dobleros + change your life + biz.