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Episode Summary:

What should you be doing in your business when you don't have clients?

When you're not getting the results you want in your business, namely not enough clients, your brain will try to talk you into procrastinating the items you had planned to do.

It’s very counterproductive.  Whether they're small tasks or big projects, your brain will try to deter you from completing them and will want to "escape" from the business, instead.

Why is that? Why do our brains want to do the opposite of what is going to get us closer to our goals?

I have a lot to say on this topic, including exactly what you should be doing in your business day to day when you don’t have clients.

Let’s talk about it.

Transcript:

Note: The transcription below was provided for your convenience. Please excuse any typos or mistakes the automated service made in translation.

Andrea Nordling 0:00
Happy Tuesday, my friend, it is Tuesday for you podcast comes out on Tuesdays, if you're listening to this, today it comes out. It's Tuesday for me because I record podcasts on Tuesdays just in advance. So it's not the same Tuesday. But happy tuesday nonetheless, here's our agenda today what to do when you don't have clients? What the heck should you be doing in your business, when you don't have clients, when you don't have any clients, when you don't have as many clients as you want to have if your client load isn't full, let's talk about it. And I encourage you not to fall into the thinking that this doesn't apply to you. So even if you don't work with one on one clients, figure out how this does apply to you. But I'm specifically talking about and I'll frame it as one on one slots on your calendar for one on one clients as well, we'll kind of frame this whole discussion as, but if you sell a group program, or if you have a digital product that you sell, or products or something else, and it's not exactly one on one clients that you work with, figure out how this does apply to you. Because it does because you have a human brain. And you have very well established thought patterns and beliefs in that human brain of yours. And so everything we talked about today is going to apply if you figure out how. So that's my challenge to you. All right. This is a big topic, I coach a lot about this inside my program. So I know that there are a lot of questions about it. In fact, I'm going to tell you, I have a training coming up in May, you're going to start hearing about it next week. And it is all about this exact topic of what to actually put on your calendar, what to actually prioritize what tasks to do first, and second, and third and how to actually get them done and not procrastinate them. In your business. Depending on what stage you're at, I have an entire training that I'm hosting about that because we are about I mean, I don't know if you've realized, but the days are getting longer, the sun is shining hotter and better. And the plants are coming up. That means that Summertime is coming. And Summertime is when all of the magic for the entire year happens in one three months span. Can you tell that I've spent most of my life living in really cold places where we have to cram all of the activities and all the recreating, and all of the occasions and all of the weddings and all of the things into one very small chunk of time, that is called Summer. And since summer is coming, I want to make sure that you have all of the tools and resources available to not bail on your business for the summer. So you can still do all of the fun things, all of the social stuff, all of the vacations, all of that and grow your business at the same time. So it's very good timing for us to have a whole training about your calendar, your schedule, your priorities, and actually getting stuff done instead of procrastinating. So that's coming up, look for it next week. In fact, you're going to hear all about it, you're on the podcast. And of course you get my emails, yeah, of course you do. If you don't, we're gonna use the word course as many times as we can, if you don't, you need to sign up for the free course immediately, which means you will then be on my email list. Build a Profitable practice.com. forward slash free is where you sign up for the free course if you haven't already. Don't wait a minute longer. And then you will get the emails and then of course, you will hear all about the free training coming up. It's called the summertime training, emphasis on the time, summer time, time, time time training. Okay, so this is why I'm doing this exact episode today. Because we're gonna start this conversation a little bit about time what to do when you don't have clients on your calendar, you've made time for them, you have space for them, you're ready for them. And they're not there yet. And then you have empty time. What do you do with that time? Well, here's what happens for a lot of my clients. And it might be happening for you, too, when you're not getting the results you want in your business. And in this case, it means you don't have the number of clients that you want on your schedule, your brain will likely tried to talk you into procrastinating the items that you had planned to do, whether they are small tasks or big projects, big undertakings, regardless, your brain will try to punt them and will want you to escape from your business. Why is that? Why? Why do our brains want to do the exact opposite thing of what is going to get us closer to our goals? Why does it happen? Well, because we have we're complex creatures from an evolutionary perspective. And we have a lot in common with our animal friends.

Andrea Nordling 4:28
We're going to talk about that a little bit. But also just because that's the way it is. It's like this is the business coach equivalent of being a parent and saying because I said so. It's like, because that's just the way it is. We always want to procrastinate, the things that are going to get us closer to our goals. If things aren't going perfectly. We for some reason think that doing less things is going to somehow fix that result. Of course it doesn't, but that's just what our brains do. So welcome. It's the same for all of us. But here's why. We're gonna kind of sum this up a little bit. We have This beautiful human brain of ours, that has evolved for many, many millennia, or however long it's been to keep us alive and to reproduce. And that means that our brains are really good at prioritizing pleasure over pain, reproducing, we're actually evolved to make reproducing pleasurable, so that we do it was painful, we probably wouldn't, right? This is our brains work. So just like nuts and bolts of it, we like pleasure, we dislike pain, we try to avoid pain. And so we'll kind of get to this in our discussion about it. But like, really, if we're thinking about our business as painful, we're going to avoid it. If we're thinking about it as pleasurable, we will seek it out. So like, that's the cliffnotes version here. But how do we actually do that? What does it mean? We're gonna talk all about that back to our brain. So we have this melding of three different things in our brain, at least, this is how I think about it. This, I'm going to simplify it out from lots of different research, lots of books, I've read lots of trainings, I've taken all of that, here's what I think we have our lizard brain, we have our mammalian brain. And we have a prefrontal cortex, which is the part of our brain that plans things ahead of time makes decisions ahead of time. And so unlike most of our animal brothers and sisters, we can make plans, we can think about consequences. And for our decisions, we can actually plan ahead and we can execute, thinking about the future, which is very different for most species on this planet. But we can do that, because we have a prefrontal cortex, which is great. We also have our mammalian brain, which is the the mammal in us that wants to nurture that wants to be part of the herd, the tribe that wants to like be one of the monkeys, that is helping each other and picking the weird bugs out of each other's hair. And like being part of the family, that's a big part of us. So we have to think about that, and honor that part of our brain, that primitive part of our brain that wants to be part of the group and doesn't want to alienate ourselves from it, it's a very real thing, it's part of our brain doesn't mean that we always have to listen to that part of our brain, but it's there, we've evolved with it, it's there for a reason. We also have this lizard part of our brain, which is the skittish part of our brain that thinks that everything is trying to kill us all the time. And it's like the gecko that my son hunts in Florida all winter long, that is just skittering across the pavement, trying to find a rock to hide under, we also have that part of our brain that is just scared of everything that thinks the sky is always falling, everything's out to get us to the end of the world, we're about to die, just stop and go hide under the rock. It's another part of our brain. So all of this together, as I think about us, in our businesses, and in every part of our life, but we talked about business here. So let's keep it business focus in our businesses. We have this beautiful mixture of us of our thoughts of our brains, I guess, no, not us. We aren't our brains, but our brains are, well, let's

Andrea Nordling 7:59
just talk about our brains. That's an entirely different podcast episode. And I'm not going to allow myself to go down that rabbit hole. In our brains, we have this beautiful mix of the planning part of us that can think things through that can make a plan that can make decisions ahead of time, and see the future and see our goals for the future. And the vision for what we're creating in our life. That's amazing may also have the mammalian brain that wants to be part of the tribe, part of the herd that's nurturing that wants to look after ourselves and others. And then we have the scared lizard that thinks that everything's trying to kill us trying to hide under the rock. It's just all there all the time. We just need to know it. And then understand that, especially when it comes to time management and procrastinating. These are the reasons why we do that we're trying to escape. In coach speak, we call this buffering we're buffering against the unpleasant, painful emotions, by going towards the pleasurable emotions that we like. So we're just we're trying to avoid the pain and we're trying to go towards pleasure. Now, there are some emotions that we kind of all agree are painful, and some that most of us agree are pleasurable, but really, they're not good or bad, right or wrong. Our emotions are just vibrations in our body. It's just, it's just a vibration. It's just a feeling in our body. But some of them we associate with pleasure, some we associated with pain. This will make more sense as we get into this conversation. But like I said before, if you're thinking about your business as painful, you're going to want to avoid it. Like that lizard that wants to go hide under the rock. We don't want painful things. We don't want scary things. We don't want things that are going to hurt us. So if you think your business is painful, and the things on your to do list are painful, you're going to want to avoid them plain and simple. If the way that you think about your business is with gratitude and excitement and with what would be the we're I can't think of the word how to articulate this but like the feeling of giving like you're giving value to people, whatever that emotion is, if you're thinking about it in that way. It's pleasurable. You want to go towards that You want to do it more if that's the way you think about your business. So from just a very baseline, rudimentary explanation, that's why what you think about is so important for your business. Even if none of this mindset stuff has ever landed for you before, maybe this makes more sense. If you think about your business as pleasurable, you're gonna seek it. If you think about it as painful, you're going to avoid it. All right. Also, sidebar, this is how your clients need to experience their health journey as well. So it's always important to think about this for your business. But don't forget that this also applies to your clients and their human brains as well, if they think that the results that they're trying to get with you the results that they're after the process that they're following with you the solution, you're giving them, if that is pleasurable to them, they're going to want to keep doing it. If it's painful, or they're thinking it's painful, then they're going to want to avoid it, just human nature. This is why some people are successful, and some people aren't, it's all how we're thinking about our goals and how we're thinking about the process that we're going through. So let's bring this back to when we don't have clients. Again, I coach on this a lot inside my program, because we have a lot of drama that comes up at the beginning of our business in particular, or really any point we hit a slump, and the clients are not piling up anymore. And that can happen. No matter how well established you are in your business that can happen, depending on what your thoughts are about your business. And usually it comes from you having thoughts that are very pressuring that are very overwhelmed. And then you'll start avoiding your business just like avoiding the pain that the lizard is trying to crawl into the rock to avoid you do that to your business. And that results in less clients can happen at any point. So always know if you are suddenly in a lot of clients, we have to look at what you're thinking. And we get really curious and dig deep on what have I been thinking about myself? What have I been thinking about my clients? What have I been thinking about my offer that has contributed to this, you will always find that there is a thought there that has contributed. But in the beginning of your business, sometimes you just don't know what to do. And at that point, you might need a little bit of help, which is what this episode is all about what to do when you don't have clients. So we're going to start with what to think about when you don't have clients. This is the theme here. So we got to start with the thoughts that were thinking in our brain. And then that is going to inform the actions to take to actually get the clients. But maybe not what you think let's just go through here. So think about sitting down at the start of your workday and thinking the thought you sit down at your desk, you're thinking the thought, I have no idea what I should do first. And it's followed very closely by the thought. But I need to get some clients ASAP, I have no idea what I should do first, but I need to get some clients ASAP. The feeling in your body, when you're thinking that thought is going to be panic, and pressure. And a confused like, I don't know what I should do first. But I have to do something, I need the clients, I need them, I need them, I need them so bad, I need to make money, this is my business, I have to make money, I need them.

Andrea Nordling 12:57
This panicky pressure confused, like all together, lots and lots of pressure. When you're feeling that way. When those are the vibrations going through your body, think about the emotions that you feel are actual measurable vibrations in your body. So when you're feeling panic, you can hear my voice is getting all weird, and I'm being very theatrical, but this is what it sounds like in my brain. So it's a good it's a good illustration of what that is vibrating in your body to when you're feeling like that. Here are the actions that are you're going to take, for example, you sit down, you're thinking I have no idea what to do first, but I need to get clients right now ASAP. Today, I need to get some I need to feeling panic and pressure and confused. So what you're gonna do from that place, is you are going to start having like spinning thoughts, you're going to have a lot of racing thoughts about all of the things that you could do to get clients all of the things all of a sudden, you're gonna have a very long list or like a brainstorm list of all of these different options of things that you could do. So be very, very long list. Your mind is just racing with all of the, well I could do this, well, I could do this. Well, I should do this. Well, I did plan to do that. I suppose I should do that. I should do it right now. It's gonna be very racing thoughts, right? You're also gonna get distracted. At that point, doing insignificant tasks that seem easy. Like things, you could just tick off the list. So when you're having those racing thoughts, then you see you can grab on to an easy one that seems like you can do it really fast, or that's easy. And you just go like, Okay, I'm going to do that. And you very quickly shift gears into doing these easy, insignificant a lot of the time tasks, and you get overwhelmed with the bigger tasks. Like what I'm saying is you're not slowing down to prioritize, what do I actually need to do here, you're just grabbing, you're just like, I need to do something, I need to do something. Okay, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this. And you're flitting from insignificant tasks to insignificant task without any prioritization happening, which leads to a lot of overwhelm. Because in that space, when you're feeling the pressure and you're confused, and you're panicking, and you're just trying to do all of the things, the bigger tasks seem very overwhelming because you would have to slow down and you'd have to Think and you'd have to plan to get some of these bigger tasks on this could be anything on your to do list. But I mean, just anything that you feel like is a bigger task, especially around like marketing and getting clients, your brain might go to like a whole website overhaul or like needing to sign up for 10 networking events. Or it might go to these like big things that seem overwhelming. And you're not going to do them, because you're just not slowing down to even think about how to approach those or if you should, because you're having these racing thoughts and all of the panic and pressure and confusion and overwhelm feelings in your body. So what you do then is you talk yourself into doing those big things later. And you put those on your to do list to tomorrow to next week to next month, and you procrastinate on those things. And then you have this looming feeling of all of these big things that are coming later, like those are going to come due later. And right now, you're procrastinating, which in the moment is avoiding pain. Right it is. And so our skittish little gecko brain is like, Oh, could we dodged the bullet for today, we don't have to think about those hard things, we can just keep doing these little things we can post on social media, we can go research something on Instagram, we can, you know, fill in the blanks of whatever that is for you. Without really prioritizing the to do list and systematically thinking through what the plan is, it's just very reactive instead of planning. When you're feeling the pressure and that confusion, a lot of times for, for my students, and I know I certainly have slipped into this earlier in my career as well. So it might be the same for you. This is the point where you will like rethink your price and your process, you're like I don't know, I think that I gotta change my price, I gotta change. It shouldn't be three months long, it should be a six month package, it shouldn't be doing this, I should be doing this and said, you start remaking decisions from this panic place, which of course, we see even more time deliberating on decisions that have already been made, and just a whole lot of spinning and confusion wasting time. And then the result is that you still don't get the clients ASAP or otherwise, the clients are still not coming. And you still don't have any idea what to do first, really, that is the procrastination cycle, the cycle of procrastination Doom and the thought that spurred the entire thing was, I

Andrea Nordling 17:22
have no idea what I should do first, but I need to get some clients as soon as possible. So what we need to be aware of is that there's there's just a totally different way to think about your business that would get you different results. So I'm going to give you another scenario. Think about this for yourself, even if these exact thoughts don't land for you What would like what would be a more powerful thought that would get you into this other feeling, which we're going to talk through. So now imagine sitting at your desk at the start of a workday, once again, and having the thought I know exactly what I need to do today, for my business to get clients. I know exactly what I need to do today. That thought for you just like it is for me, gives me a feeling of calm and focus and certainty. When I think that that I know exactly what I need to do today, for my business to get clients. I feel very certain I feel very focused, I feel very calm. I also feel relief, like I know exactly what to do. It's not going to be that big of a deal. I know the few things to do I know exactly what they are, is not overwhelming. I'm just I feel a lot of relief in that. So from that place of relief and certainty and focus and calm, which just slow you down, like my I just feel relaxed, I feel like I said relieved from that vibration in my body. And it's probably the same for you. I just systematically tackle my calendar items for the day, I start at the top, I go down as planned, and I just check them off the list, boom, boom, boom, I don't procrastinate. I don't even entertain thoughts of procrastinating. I feel very focused. Remember, I feel very calm and certain that I made a plan already. It's a great plan. And I just need to execute the plan. So I don't revisit my previous plans or decisions and try to remake them. That's not happening. Just executing the things I said I was going to do. I'm doing them. I'm looking forward to shutting my laptop at the end of the day and not thinking about my business again until tomorrow. And in that space. I do have ideas for how to simplify things and what to experiment with next, and so I keep them on a running list. I don't feel like this urgency to do all of those things right now. I guess that's the difference between the previous scenario and this one is I'm not trying to do them all today. There's time I'm executing my plan. I know exactly what to do. I just do the things. And then the result of that is that I generate a lot of data to evaluate. I figure out what's working and what isn't working because I'm actually doing things so I can actually evaluate some data some actual variances and figuring out what I want to do more of and what I can just take off the list forever, totally, which really simplifies, and probably do get future clients with whatever I was doing. As I was not procrastinating the items on my list and I was actually doing them, they're probably things that are gonna result in clients either immediately or in the future. All from a different have thought, circumstances exactly the same. We're sitting down to get to work. But the thoughts are very, very different about my business, your business, whoever's business is thinking this right. And that's ultimately, what is going to inform what to do with your time when you don't have clients. I didn't lose the plot here on what this episode is about. But we have to talk about this, just our thoughts about our business, if they're pressure thoughts, if they're pain thoughts, our little lizard self is going to want to run away and hide from them. And there's a lot of scrolling on social media that happens then over shopping, over eating, I know I have definitely been one to reach for a bag of chips, when I'm thinking that my business is painful. That seems to be a real answer that that my brain likes to go to that there's for sure the answer to that problem is in a bag of chips, over anything over, over over scrolling over overworking can be definitely something that you buffer with, against these feelings of pressure and pain. Any of that, we'll talk all about that over the coming weeks. So

Andrea Nordling 21:28
we don't need to go down that rabbit hole right now. But I'm just saying that the thoughts that invoke that feeling of pressure and pain, you will avoid this because it is animal nature, human nature, brain nature, whatever that is, it will happen if you are feeling like your business is pleasurable. And pleasurable in this scenario is I know exactly what I need to do today for my business to get clients feeling very focused, feeling very competent and capable, that's pleasurable. When you're thinking about your clients, and you're thinking about the results that they are so desperate to get that you can help them with, that's pleasurable. It's like our little monkey self that wants to pick the bugs off of our neighbor, we want to help each other we have this innate feeling and desire to want to help each other. That's what you get to do in your business. So when you're thinking about that, and when you're consistently reminding yourself and collecting evidence for how that is possible, and how that's important, and how that's the purpose of what you're doing and your business is pleasurable, you'll have thoughts about your business as being pleasurable, you will want to do the things you will be calm and focused and certain. And you will fill your time with activities that actually create clients just from that thought that you know exactly what you need to do. Okay, so you're with me here, right? I want to say that I see a lot of people who have this expectation of their business, like it's a light switch that they turn on, like, Okay, I'm in business now. And they turn on the light switch. And immediately, everything is it's like, the Nike Corporation just opened up in your house, and everything is going to just perfectly flow with systems and processes and everything perfect. Like that, that's just not a thing, that's not going to happen that way. And I do want to, I feel like this is a good place to kind of slide in this reminder that your business is like a child that you have given birth to and you need to nurture it, and it's going to grow now, and your child, your infant, child, little baby business, is not going to bring home the bacon for the family, not right away in the beginning. That doesn't mean it can't grow really fast. That doesn't mean that it can't, I don't know what the like the what the part of this metaphor would be. But it's not like you can't train your child to do things quickly. But just don't have the expectation that from the word go where you start your business that it's instantly going to provide for the family. That doesn't always happen. Okay, have some compassion for your business as you're learning how to grow it. And as it is growing and you're nurturing it and everyone is learning together, it will get better. The baby doesn't stay up all night long. For the for its whole life. It's not always so painful. You know, as a mother, I can see how this is so true that the things that are really hard when our babies are little, are not hard forever, but then they are replaced with new hard things. And that's also true. So if your business isn't in the beginning infancy and you are further along, you will see that things that used to be hard aren't anymore but you have new challenges. That's okay. It's totally to be expected doesn't mean they have to be painful. In fact, we can reframe them as being pleasurable kind of a different direction that I was going to take this episode but I like it. Absolutely like it. So are you letting yourself start with the basics and your business and really master them? Or are you like trying to run before you crawl to keep in the baby theme here? What What are your expectations there? Alright, I do have a point in that example, which is clarity about what to do comes from action. Always clarity comes from action, you have to do something, anything to know what to do next. This is what I was talking about when I said, you know, you need to generate data, you need to be doing things so that you can evaluate if you should keep doing those things where you should be doing something different, but you have to do something to get any data to evaluate. So

Andrea Nordling 25:26
clarity comes from action, here is one of the things that I would suggest I suggest this to my students, and I'll I'll bring it on here, I think is very helpful. If you have an open calendar of client slots that aren't filled yet, here's what I suggest you do, pretend that they are filled, your brain doesn't know the difference. So just start practicing as if those slots are filled, like get dressed, get ready for the day. And sit down as if there is a client on the other side of your computer on a zoom session, or however you work with your clients. Get dressed, get ready and sit down for that client session as if they are there. Go through the session as if there was a client present. If you do our sessions, you're gonna take an hour and you're going to go through the session. Don't argue with me that you don't know what to say. Because they are not asking questions. You know what they're gonna say, You know what your clients say pretend, okay, pretend practice explaining the concepts that you teach your clients. Time yourself, maybe this would be helpful. I know a lot of my students and me in the beginning as well tended to go over time on our sessions. So tying yourself see how long it actually takes you to talk through the things that you teach, get an actual idea for how much time you should be allotting for teaching on a session versus how much q&a You're gonna have, and back and forth, and dialogue and review with your clients. Do you know how you do that you actually do it. Remember, clarity comes from action to do something. So even if you don't have a client on the calendar, sit down and pretend that you do. Go through your process and more refine it time yourself, practice explaining the concepts, experiment with the flow of your process. from week to week, you can keep doing this, like day to day, pretend that you have that client and then you're going on to week two and week three, experiment with the flow of your process and how you structure the sessions. I know your brain is going to want to have a lot of reasons why this is the dumbest idea you've ever heard. And that's okay, you could have resistance to this and still do it anyway.

Andrea Nordling 27:29
Are you willing to do this tedious work? With my colleagues? We call this the tedious work. It's the tedious this just the stuff that you don't want to do that seems so silly that seems like such a waste of time? No, are you willing to do it are you willing to have an entire practice session, and then create follow up emails afterwards for your pretend client, which by the way, then you could use as swipe copy to send to your paying clients soon. To recap the things that you do in your sessions and through your process. This is all for you to start generating assets and to start solidifying your process and your delivery for your paying clients. This is in service of your future clients, because going to make their experience so much better, it's going to also make you so much better at marketing and selling your process when you've delivered it. If you haven't delivered it to real humans, do it to no one, do it just to yourself, just practice it. And you will see like just this the shift in, I'm pretending to be in business versus I sit down and I get to work at my desk. And I do this. And this is my process. And I have a three month package. And this is what we do every week. And just having that clarity in your brain, it's going to help you sell so much better. It's going to be magnetizing to your people, the real actual humans in the world that you talk to, because they're going to feel that confidence coming from you that confidence is going to be coming from you having done this tedious work. So I highly suggest if you don't have clients on your calendar, pretend that you do pretend that those spots are filled. If you have two sessions today, sit down, do the sessions. Even if nobody is on the other side of it, it's going to help you get butts in the seat for those sessions so much faster. That's what will happen when you do this work. When you're willing to do the tedious work and you're willing to talk through your process and to talk through your ideas and to write some follow up email copy, you are going to just see the holes in your delivery, you're going to get more ideas. It's just it's like just the momentum of moving forward in any direction instead of being stagnant and confused and feeling like oh, this is such a waste of time. I don't know what to do. I don't have a real business. All of those thoughts are so unnecessary and creates so much pain, which your lizard brain will avoid. But the purpose of sitting down and saying I'm getting so much better at delivering my process because I practice it Three times a week, you're getting so much better in collecting that evidence for yourself and remind yourself, I'm getting so much better at talking about these concepts and simplifying them, because I'm doing it in my own brain, and I'm just practicing it every week. So it's going to be so much better for my future clients, or if you already have clients, it's going to be so much better for my clients moving forward, because I'm getting so much better at delivering it. That confidence and creating that evidence for yourself and reminding yourself of that will always lead to more clients, you will have way better sales conversation, we will just be like this magnet that people keep coming to and asking more questions and wanting to grab a console call with you and wanted to get on your calendar, because they can feel that confidence that you have in yourself and that purpose, that it's pleasurable, and you're gonna want to do that work. But you have to start with being willing to do the tedious work. Because your brain prioritizes pleasure over pain. And I'm telling you, if it's an option for you to be confused about what to do for work for the day to not and just feel overwhelmed about all of the things you could be doing and indulge in the confusion of I don't know what to do first, this is so hard. I don't have any clients, I need to make money, oh, my gosh, what am I going to do you indulge in that your brain will grab on to any tether that you offer it to grab onto and get out of this situation. So if you suddenly have the thought, you know, we could just do this tomorrow. And for today, we could go shopping. We could just revisit this tomorrow, when we have more time. And right now we could go watch Netflix, or we could go cook dinner or you could go do laundry or whatever it is that you do to get out of the tedious work. If your brain has that option, it will take that option every time because that is pleasurable. The tedious work, if you're thinking about it in such a way it can be painful. So that's why you have to reframe the tedious work to be pleasurable. Do you see what I'm saying? If it's an option to just quit work for the day and go watch Netflix and eat cookies on the couch or chips or both, alternating between the two asked me how I know that's an option, then your brain will want to do that when

Andrea Nordling 32:05
you don't have clients on the books. Right. But if you are committed to doing the tedious work, and you're gonna do mock client sessions, instead, you're going to get dressed for the day and you're going to look professional, you're going to feel professional and you're going to show up to work and you're going to do these mock client sessions, then your brain is going to figure out how to make that more pleasurable, which is by the way, having paying clients in the sessions that's more pleasurable than doing them alone. So your brain is gonna get to work figuring out how to do that. It's gonna find you more clients. And I don't know exactly how you're going to find more clients, but you do. That's the cool thing you do. You just need to be channeling your thoughts away from the pain that your business is painful, or that getting clients is painful, or that anything on your to do list is painful, and redirecting it to how that is pleasurable. A really good way to do that. I know I'm a broken record, but I'm just gonna say it again, a really good way to do that is to just pretend that you have the clients and to be improving your delivery and your processes and the way that you think about how you explain things, how you explain concepts and ideas and your philosophies to your clients. Practicing that makes you get better at it makes you feel more confident your brain all of a sudden, will want to get out of the confusion spiral and the I don't know what to do spiral and it's like, I'm gonna go find the clients, if we're gonna sit here anyway. And we're gonna be doing this, we're more than ready, I'm gonna go find the clients, that's what will happen. Just the best news of the day. So how's that for a podcast? Title? What to do when you don't have clients? And then the answer is, I don't know, but you do. But that's kind of that's kind of summarizes the work that we do around here. It's different for everybody. I don't know the answer for you, but you do know the answer. You just need to be willing to find it, and not to resist whatever the answer is. So this is another thing that's really good to discuss. What are you resisting doing? Or what are you resisting? Deciding? When you think of this when you like, really are? Where are my clients coming from? What am I going to do? What do I need to do to get more clients? Or what do I need to be doing when I don't have clients? Maybe you already have some ideas of things that you should be doing on your calendar. I hate using the should but this is what our brain says I'm going to just pare it back to you like what should I be doing in this time? What is that you probably have some ideas about what it is. And if you're resisting doing them why? Just why at like, actually ask yourself this lean into the resistance of whatever comes up and ask why am I resisting this? even write it down? This could be a really good journal prompt for you. Why am I resisting? Blank? Does your brain knows exactly why it's resisting it? And if you're compassionate and ask the question in a loving way where you're not going to judge the answer why am I resisting this? It will give you the answer. Why you usually uncover if you do this, give yourself some time write about whatever comes up. You'll usually uncover an emotion that you're trying to avoid feeling. Okay? So usually if we're resisting something, it's because of the version of pain that we're going to experience from our thoughts about doing that thing. It's not it's not actually the thing, whatever it is, that's going to cause the feeling that we're avoiding. It's our thoughts about it. This is rather cyclical. Our thoughts cause our feelings. And if you don't like those, so then we think more thoughts about wanting to avoid them and getting the feeling again, and it's like a vicious cycle. But we need to uncover what emotion that is. You're trying to avoid feeling? Is it shame? Is it rejection? inadequacy? Again, this is our mammalian brain that wants to be the monkey in the tribe. What we don't like feelings, typically, that make us feel like we're outside of the norm in some way. So just be compassionate about that part of your brain. Are you trying to avoid shame? Are you trying to avoid rejection? Are you trying to avoid inadequacy or confusion or overwhelm? Are you trying to avoid the feeling of failure or of disappointment? I would say that failure usually is not really an emotion, I don't think I think that there's other more accurate emotions around it. For me, it's disappointment. I've, I feel like I've done a lot of work on this. So this isn't my default anymore. But in the past, when I would fail at something, I was very disappointed in myself, and I wanted to stay away from that feeling of disappointment. I've

Andrea Nordling 36:30
really found that to be very painful emotion. So I would find myself procrastinating tasks where I could fail and feel and risk feeling disappointment. So this work has really uncovered that for me, what is it for you? What are you trying to avoid? What is the worst thing that would happen? If you did exactly what your beautiful prefrontal cortex and you had decided that you needed to do today for your business? Or this week for your business? whatever plan you had for yourself? What would be the worst thing that would happen? If you did that? It's an emotion and emotion would come up, the worst thing that would happen is I would feel a feeling what is it? Can you handle feeling that emotion? If that's the worst thing that can happen? Can you handle feeling it? I bet you can. In fact, I know you can. Because like I said, this is exactly the same work that I do every single day in my own self coaching. For me, along with disappointment, the two emotions that I find that I avoid, like the plague, are vulnerable and stagnant. i Oh, just even saying those out loud gets me all cringy it just, it just don't like the vibration in my body. When I think of either of those emotions vulnerable and stagnant. No, thank you. Unsubscribe, I bought my brain, if left to its own devices goes to very extreme lengths to avoid feeling vulnerable or stagnant. Sometimes it tells me I don't know what to do. But that's a lie. Usually, I don't know what to do. This is just a like a key for decoding your own confusion or overwhelm. Usually I don't know what to do is code for the thing I need to do might make me feel for me vulnerable or stagnant. I'm on to myself. Definitely on myself. So I would encourage you to do the same pull on that pull on that thread for yourself a little bit, or you onto yourself, what is the worst thing that could happen? And then to tie it back to the original, like our original theme here of this episode? How could you think about it differently, whatever that is, whatever emotion that is, that is the painful emotion you're trying to avoid, like the lizard that wants to go under the rock. What if instead, you were willing to feel that emotion, and you could even maybe think about how it's pleasurable or how the results on the other side of it are pleasurable, so that you don't keep hiding from them, you're willing to feel them, you're willing to just have the emotion and vibration in your body that you don't like, just like the emotion of stagnant which for me is so distasteful, I cannot even. So I've tried very consciously and we're going to talk all about this next week, tried consciously to cultivate this feeling of being stagnant on purpose. It's a thing. It's a thing. You take the emotions that you resist the most, that are the most painful in some ways, or the most distasteful that you want to avoid. You figure out how to feel them on purpose and just get used to feeling them. This is the work feeling the things you don't want to feel which then opens the door to all all possibilities when you're not avoiding that anymore when you're when suddenly the lizard isn't afraid and it just stands in the middle of the side of the stands. Yeah, I guess it still does it stand is something on four legs stand. Yeah, it stands like really thinking about this lizard and it has tiny little short legs and I'm wondering if it stands but anyway, as it's hanging out in the middle of the sidewalk instead of quickly running away to hide, because it isn't afraid of the emotion anymore, right, could even be pleasurable. And that is the key to figuring out how to get the items on your to do list done not procrastinate them, which results in more clients, better quality clients, higher quality processes and deliverables for your clients, which means that those clients are going to get even better results. Because your thinking is on point, you are figuring out the best way to serve your clients. So you're willing to do the tedious work. That's what I'm trying to say. And yes, this is the work that we do inside my program. Inside the profitable nutritionist program, this is exactly what we do. It's why I always say that as soon as you join, you get a constant drip of personal development through every stage of the process, whether you like it or not, it's like an IV drip, we just insert that line as soon as you get in. So even if you come for all of this strategy, and you think that that's what you need is you need to figure out your niche, and you need to figure out your pricing, you need to figure out your offer. And you need to figure out your marketing plan, that's what you're coming for, you're gonna get that with a very strong dose of end to this is how your brain is gonna throw a fit about it. So let's also addressed that right away as well.

Andrea Nordling 41:16
And the results of doing that work alongside this strategy is the business that you absolutely love that provides consistent, abundant profits for you and for your family. This work that we get to do is such a joy, we get to help people solve the problems that they desperately want to solve, I really think about that and soak in it, I want you to think about the people that are searching for you for exactly what your specialty is. And if you don't have a specialty, they're searching for you anyway, they, they want what you have, they want to know about health and wellness and healing an actual holistic well being in this world. They want your perspective and they want to know from you, they don't want to read a book about it from someone else, they want you to tell them about it, and they want to pay you for that. How incredible is it, we get to have a business and make money doing this kind of work. It's amazing. Feel very, very strongly about this. And I hope that you do do. So if you are having a little intuitive nudge that the program would be for you follow that nudge my friend listen to it, enrollment opens up on May 19, until the 25th. So put that on your calendar, you can join the waitlist for the program, and start the free course actually at buildaprofitablepractice.com/join if you haven't done so already. So as soon as you start the free course you are on my email list, and you will hear all about the training that's coming up in May. And also that's going to be a prelude to the doors opening for the programs. You'll also hear about the enrollment opening on May 19. For the program, we would welcome you with open arms. When you get to do this work for your own business mindset first, and apply the strategies that I teach. And just all of the growth formulas that you find inside the program, when you apply that to your business first, obviously your business grows faster and bigger than before. That is a given. But what's even better. And what I really want you to set your sights on is that your clients will get such fabulous results from you doing this work. Because when you learn this for yourself, you teach it to them. And it's magnetizing they're going to be coming to you feeling this confidence that you have, which is a dream for your business as well. But think about the results that they get because you're showing up and because you're doing this work on yourself first. It's amazing, absolutely amazing. We would love to have you may 19. Put it on your calendar. Okay. Also hate to give you too much homework in one episode. But I want to remind you to go make your resistance list of the stale horrific emotions that you resist feeling. Because we're going to pick up on this conversation again next week and talk about that more. So you can get ahead of the game a little bit by doing the exercise where you think about what emotions you resist the most. That will be very helpful for next week, and I will see you then my friend