TWC S02 E19: Stepping into Your Authentic Self, Part 2: Do the Work

This second episode in my three-part series on Stepping into Your Authentic Self is where I share about doing the work and five steps I've taken to become more authentic in my business self and why it's been a surprisingly healing journey for me.

Katherine Burrows, Big Impact Ghostwriter
Katherine Burrows helps purpose-driven experts make a bigger difference by getting their big ideas into books and out into the world to multiply their impact and their profit. She is known internationally for her intuitive understanding, perceptive observations, and ability to write accurate descriptions. 

Katherine hosts The Write Connection podcast, which is designed to help you choose the right words and stories in your business book to create authentic connections with your prospects, clients, network, and communities.

Katherine’s personal alchemy of literary storytelling, human psychology, business marketing, and unwavering passion provides her with the unique and powerful insight to bring out the authentic character of the expert and their business in a voice - YOUR voice - that will improve lives, influence others, and even change the world.

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Email: thewriteconnection@katherineburrowscreative.com

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Podcast Music by Nathan Symen of NST Music: https://nst-music.bandcamp.com/

Transcript

ro: This is The Write Connection. This podcast is designed to help you choose the right words and stories in your business content to create authentic connections with prospects, clients, partners and colleagues. Now the host of The Write Connection, Katherine Burrows.

Katherine Burrows: Thanks so much Carl and welcome to The Write Connection. In episode one of this three part series on stepping into your authentic self, we looked at the steps I took to create the clarity I needed to step into my authentic self, clarifying my values, educating myself, practicing critical thinking, finding confidence and living into my purpose. So it sounds like I'm good to go. I'm awesome, let's do this, but the problem was now I needed to figure out how to bring that authenticity into my business and the services I offer. Think about it, like building a house, I had a good strong basement foundation at this point, but there was nothing built above it yet. So to build this house, I would hire a contractor because I don't have the knowledge at the moment to do that project. So in building my business, I've invested in some amazing coaches and each one of them has helped elevate me to the next level.

 But ultimately it was me who had to be committed to do the work, to get to be who I wanted to be. So today I'd like to share with you five steps that I went through while doing the work to step into my authentic self. And the first step was my mind set, adjusting my mind set to get rid of my blocks. So when we're growing up, we're often taught to fit in, to not stand out, to not question authority, to not be different. But if we don't find out what those differences are, our strengths, our gifts, our qualities, our skills and insights that make us unique. Then we can never become our authentic self author Cynthia Occelli puts it this way for a seed to achieve its greatest expression It must come completely undone. The shell cracks its insides come out and everything changes to someone who doesn't understand growth.

 It would look like destruction. There are a lot of systems, modalities and schools have thought on how to get rid of our blocks to success I won't go into all the options here just know that you need to find what works for you. For me, I use a combination of meditation, yoga, emotional freedom technique, Reiki, visualization, and of course, journaling, walking, swimming and spending time in nature, unplugging and regrounding myself are also very helpful. So in working with a mind set coach, one of the first and probably biggest mind set blocks that I came across in my subconscious, that I didn't even really realize that I had this belief or that I was holding onto this belief was that if I am my true self, I don't deserve money. And I don't wanna go into the backstory behind how that probably came to be. But what I did with this is look at it, ask myself, is it true?

 Is it still serving me? And the answer is clearly no, in this case. So with all of our mind set beliefs, we need to go through them and examine them. Let go of what no longer serves us to figure this out. Keep asking why you believe something and ask why again, until you get the answer. So you might say that when you get paid, you don't feel like your true self. Well, why is that? And keep going until you get back to that belief that might stem from childhood might stem from something early in your career might be something from your cultural background, your family background, whatever it is, ask whether it still serves you in your current life. If it does wonderful stop and feel some gratitude for it. But if not, bless and release that belief, thanking it for the times passed when it kept you safe or helped you.

 If that is appropriate, if it was a false belief from the beginning, such as my block was, then I give gratitude for my current realization. I am so grateful that I now know I do deserve to be my true self. I was born to be my true self, my true self and the service I provide have immense value. And I a hundred percent deserve to receive the investment that people make when they're working with me. If you find that you continue to struggle, consider creating an affirmation around that topic for this one I like to use I have value, I am valued. I say that over and over to myself at various times during the day or the week, whenever I feel like I need to hear it. I write it out frequently when I journal as part of a list of recurring affirmations that I use changing your mind takes repetition and work, but you'll be amazed.

 What opens up when you do that work? So get comfortable with being uncomfortable. There's always going to be some level of chaos and change in our world. And change means growing pains, Emma Zeck writer and trauma recovery coach says stepping into your power isn’t a one time occurrence its small daily actions as your nervous system slowly learns that being powerful is safe. It's just that people in their own wounds had you convinced that shrinking was the only way to survive. I think that's such a profound statement. So welcome the changes because they bring us strength, wisdom and grace in our lives. And they provide us with the amazing opportunity to grow more fully into our authentic selves. The second step I needed to do in all of this work was drilling down into my niche. So that included really defining who I'm called to serve.

 And here's a hint. They will both share your values and value you, the shared values are a huge part of why they are attracted to your offering or your service. And yes, our ideal client will absolutely value who we are, what we do, the benefit they receive from us. And they will be 100% willing to invest in us. According to the value we provide let me say that again, because this comes up in, I think every networking group I've ever been in our ideal client is willing to pay us what we're worth period. Once we know who that ideal client is, how are we called to serve them? What can we do that no one else can do just the way that we can do it. In marketing this is referred to as your unique selling proposition, we can also think about it as our unique offering gift or talent.

 That thing we do that no one else does. What sets us apart? What makes us our authentic self for me, it's taking my blend of training in literary writing human psychology and business marketing and combining it with my unwavering passion for writing and helping people once you know what your service is, how will you deliver that service? In episode one, I shared that my values are integrity, wisdom, creativeness, connectedness, communication and resiliency and those values form the basis of how I deliver my service. One of the most important things to me is to always show up as my best self, that is my well rested, nourished, hydrated, inspired, insightful, creative self, thriving, creative and connected and part of showing up as my best self means being intentional with my time away from work, as I'll get to shortly, then you use those values to create your offering.

 What would be helpful to you in that situation to solve that problem, that your ideal client has put yourself in the mind of your ideal client? What do they most want or need and how can you make that happen for them? How can I use my unique insights, my love of writing and my desire to help people to create an offering for my ideal client. That's one of the many questions I had to ask myself and find the answer to. For me, it first involves removing their worries about facing a blank page or blank screen alone it alleviates their anxiety, their guilt, their shame that comes from feeling like their own writing isn’t good enough. And it removes the stress of trying to find the time in their schedule to book in writing and I haven't even sat down to type anything yet. Then I perform my business character analysis, which provides my clients with their defining characteristic, three supporting characteristics and the culminating result.

 This reassures them, that I'm the right person to write their book. It gives them a positive view of themselves that increases their confidence. That they'll truly be able to make a difference with their book. And it provides them with clarity about the benefits that they bring as a person, to their own clients. We still haven't started any book yet from this place of inspiration, we look at what their purpose and goals are for their book, the wisdom they want to share the takeaway messages they want to bring to their audience. From there, we create the book outline. I provide the client with a choice on how they give me their content information. It can be a rough draft in sentences, a list of bullet points, an audio file, or a video recording, whatever they are most comfortable with. I often tell people, just throw on your zoom, start a meeting, start recording and just talk to me.

 And the words will start to flow as they talk. And as they think about what they wanna say, as I write my creativity, insights and passion naturally overflow and my client can relax because they know that nothing will ever be published without their approval. So they always retain control over the final manuscript. The third step I took in doing all that work is putting systems in place to build a strong foundation of support. So that involved many things, creating a team, getting documents in place, creating systems, thinking about and writing down policies and procedures. So all of these things require consideration, initial creation and then periodic review. When creating a team I asked, what do I love to do? And what do I love to spend the majority of my time doing? What work do I absolutely need to do myself? And now that I'm building a team, I delegate everything else to them.

 I look for motivated, qualified people and then give them the space and trust them to do their jobs effectively take the time to appreciate your team often, they are the backbone of your business. A body cannot stand up straight or take steps without a backbone. I've refined my on boarding process and I'm continually looking for ways to streamline and make things easier for my clients, myself and my team. Be sure to consult experts, including legal and financial experts, where needed as well as business experts. The fourth step was putting routines and structure in place for productivity. And that relates a bit to my team and how I interact with them. But I'm mostly on this step thinking of myself and my own Workday structures for daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual routines. I surround myself with positive, productive people. I read content, listen to content and watch content about creativity and productivity and how to improve business.

 And I have one book in particular that I'm sure I've mentioned before, which is Mind Management Not Time Management by David Kadavy, which talks about managing your mind to increase your creativity and your productivity and having the flexibility to not be tied to that nine to five and taking those times to refresh and recharge the well of our inspiration and not feeling guilty. If we don't sit at a desk from nine to five, just because that's what our parents and grandparents did, or even it's what our friends do now, maybe. But if you've chosen the entrepreneurial life, there's really nothing set in stone about it. It's full of change and adaptation and resiliency. So figure out what those routines and structures look like for you and when you think about putting them in place, think about your business being 10 times the size that it is now.

 One of the coaches that I worked with briefly said this to me and it's really been something that I just keep coming back to over and over again. And that was that it's so much cheaper to 10 times your business than it is to double it and double it. And by the way, that only gets to eight, not ten. So think about if you had ten times as many clients, if your team was big enough to handle them, if your on boarding process needed to handle that many clients, if you were delivering that many more workshops or you had that many people signed up for your online courses, if you were having coaching calls with that many more people, just how would that all work out and how would it all blend into your existing system and set things up for that 10 times and then grow into it.

 And you will, it's like when you have kids and you buy clothes that are a couple sizes too big, you totally know that they're gonna grow into it. And they usually do way before you thought they would. So definitely think about what that vision looks like in that 10 times scale and then work from there in the fifth step about doing the work is always creating, maintaining and being aware of balance. So we all hear about work life balance and it's super important to have healthy boundaries when you need time away from work. And when we work online, as many of us have been doing in the past couple of years, but also as many of us do when we're working digitally communicating online, serving international clients. Sometimes our days are pretty fluid, sometimes we do a couple of hours of work and then we are washing the dishes or doing the laundry.

 And then we're back to a client meeting on a zoom call or whatever it is. And if that works well for you, that's awesome. If you prefer to keep a nine to five schedule and take your Saturdays and Sundays off, that's great. If you wanna always take Wednesday afternoons off, whatever it is that works for you just ensure that you're creating that time you want and you need for family hobbies, health and exercise, community participation and volunteer work If that's what you're interested in, a spiritual practice and gratitude, just make sure you're staying positive. Keeping those vibrations raised and participating in activities that really reflect and align with your values. And if you need some help on drilling down into what that would look like when you say no to those things that don't align with your values and open up space to say yes to the things that do, I would highly recommend the book essentialism by Greg McEwen.

 We need to remember that caring for ourselves enables us to care for others and show up as our best selves to serve. So I talked about showing up as my best self and that's really what I wanna provide to my clients is me being well, rested, refreshed, full of energy and creativity, ready to go to work, ready to serve them. And that's what they deserve. That's what I deserve. So stepping into our authentic self requires that time spent doing the work like me, you maybe still be working on getting all of your routines and systems in place, let me assure you. You will definitely gain valuable time and energy back when you spend the time setting those things up, then it will be simple and easy to make changes needed. As you offer new programs or create new funnels. If you find yourself eating a meal alone, sometime during the week, instead of scrolling through your inbox, grab a notebook and a pen and start listing all the systems and processes you'd like to create.

 Highlight the ones you can delegate. See how much more efficient you can make your business and find new ways to live into your purpose by doing the work to create the life you want. In the next episode, we'll talk about how to communicate effectively when putting your authentic self out into the world. If you are ready to do the work now let's book a zoom call, I'll drop my calendar link into the show notes below. Thanks for listening today I hope today's episode inspired you to tell your own story more creatively, please join me next time for more about how words and stories from our authentic selves, create The Write Connection.

 Outro: Thanks for listening to The Write Connection. What did you think of the show today? Give us a rating and leave us a comment if you have a question for Katherine, reach out to her by sending her an email, The Write Connection@KatherineBurrowscreative.com or visit her website, Katherineburrowscreative.com. And don't forget to follow Katherine on social media thanks again for listening to The Write Connection.