There Are No Guarantees

I spend quite a bit of time in my head – trying to figure things out. I love structure. I want the comfort of knowing that once I follow the RIGHT steps or the PRESCRIBED steps of those who went before that I would arrive safely at my intended destination, sans surprises!

Needless to say my life seems more like a roller coaster ride than a walk along a straight and narrow path.

Logically and on some deeper level I know that I will encounter bumps along the road, and setbacks. I think what screws me up big time is my predetermined picture of the outcome – how things will look once I complete the steps and fight off the dragons along the way. Once I start off on the journey I’m constantly giving meaning to everything that happens as it relates to this predetermined picture. And of course how I pictured it and how it eventually unfolds is sometimes as far apart as the North and South poles.

So for example I recently found out how to create my greatest impact bringing all of me into alignment with the very talented Tami Smith at the Dawning Point. Working with her showed me WHERE to focus my attention and how I should best leverage my strengths. It was just the eye-opener I needed and I set out to implement based on my new awareness.

I developed my Isolation Process™, and then decided to follow Tami’s method of offering the Entrepreneurial Equation. I would offer a FREE Discovery Coaching Call to help those who took me up on my offer to decide whether my process could work for them. I was stoked. The promotion went out and the bookings started coming in for FREE sessions.

In my mind I was sailing toward easy success. This was the missing piece. It’s going to smooth from here on in! Except…

• I got no shows
• I talked to a couple folks who seemed excited and wanted to take next steps – but never did.
• I had people turn up for the call not knowing why they even registered

After feeling a little despondent I thankfully realized that the results I was getting had important messages for me:

Initially I advertised a FREE Discovery Coaching Call. I am accustomed signing up for FREE calls, taking advantage of many offers made by great coaches who live outside of Trinidad and Tobago and I know that even though the service is FREE I have to make the call. Well many of those who signed up didn’t realize that they had to do the calling. And in some cases they didn’t realize that this was a phone conversation. So I had to modify my offer to a FREE Discovery Coaching PHONE call AND I also added an automatic message after folks signed up on gisellehudson.youcanbook.me with my phone number including the country code since I also had people calling from outside of Trinidad and Tobago and my Skype ID.

My results improved a bit in that folks started to SHOW up for the call.

After week two I analyzed who called so far and why and decided to include on my appointment booking page the following…

Individuals who have taken advantage of the FREE Discovery Coaching Phone Call have started businesses but are floundering, left their job abruptly to start a business but are a little lost regarding what to do next or are in jobs that they dislike and would like some direction as to how to exit and either find a new job or start a business.

In between all that, I also realized that I simply CANNOT be ALL things to ALL people. Why wasn’t I using stuff from other people to help those who came to me for direction? I felt somehow deep down that I needed to create it myself – you know feel as if  “I INVENTED FIRE!” Talk about bullshit! So for example Illana has a great FREE offer – Start Something – which is great for those who’ve either taken the plunge or thinking about going into business for themselves and I’m now offering it on my resource page.

I’m still learning and tweaking and realizing that there are simply no guarantees. Sometimes hard work and persistence won’t result in the outcomes you envisage BUT the outcomes carry within them something greater which you have to look for EVERY single time and use that to shape your way going forward.

Alan Weiss sums it up beautifully…

There is only one response to a new idea, and that’s to see if it will work for you. You might find that it won’t, or it might with some tweaking, or it definitely will.

In other words MORE ACTION = MORE CLARITY…PERIOD!

 

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