How Knowledge and History Kill Your Success

Sometimes what you know may be more dangerous than what you don’t know. You may mistake knowledge or experience as “truth”. There is only one truth about your business; what you believe will come true.

Let me show you how this works. Tika became distraught when her creativity seemed to disappear overnight. She is a designer, so losing her creative mojo instantly produces stress. When her mental fog lifts she is barraged with clients calling and asking for stuff she can’t provide. Profits dry up and the stress escalates.

The killer of Tika’s creativity was a client who said they could only afford a design costing $10,000 when she knew that in order to do it right, the cost would be more than double that. Tika felt boxed in by the limitation of price. This has happened many times over the years she’s been in business.

She consulted with other designers and they all agreed that this is the way it “goes” in their industry. They had a “bitchfest” about other things they experience like having to hunt down final payments from clients, the lack of good people to outsource their work to and the long hours they put in with little appreciation.

Tika and her peers never thought there could be a solution that worked because their history told them that they had tried everything and never had a satisfactory result. They all tolerated the “downside” to their industry … although they didn’t do it well.

I coached Tika to shift in her perception of what was possible. She decided to do her creative designing as if the client had given her an unlimited budget. Her creativity and confidence were instantly restored. She produced a brilliant design. She approached the customer with a firm stand on what her vision was and that it wasn’t going to be within the budget he’d originally given her.

At the end of the conversation, the client agreed to spend four times the original amount. What shifted? TIKA! She decided to do her craft her way. Her confidence and passion came back, she listened to her inner business expert and the result was exactly what she had been craving all these years.

Listening to other people’s limitations will get you nowhere. I’d be out of business within weeks if I did that because people tell me daily that they don’t have the time or money to invest in my services. I tell them they can’t afford not to hire me.

I’d also be broke and working 60 hours a week if I had followed the expertise of the coaches who told me what to charge, way back when I started my business. My own history shows me I can attract business with no effort.

My history also shows me years of major “efforting” with little result.

If I thought history was an indicator of my future when my business was tanking, I would have gotten a job. I would’ve thrown in the towel after nobody registered for my pilot classes.

There is one thing your history can tell you. It reveals the results of what you were thinking and feeling. That’s it. And since you can change those two things on a daily basis, nothing is ever set in stone. I mean nothing. There is not one circumstance you can’t turn around. You can even attract a whole new set of customers and employees, even if your past shows you a lineup of flops.

Forget what you know when it comes to the bombs, disasters, financial ruin, crappy relationships, encounters with thieves, and all that other depressing stuff.

If you had no access to your history and all the passion you needed for your desired business outcome, how would you proceed?

There is a reality you can create that includes bliss. That’s my focus. Wanna join me?