(Video) Are you pregnant with your biz?

Hey, Coachy Coachy Loves.

Are you pregnant with your biz? If you’re in your first year OR (like me) in the midst of changing things up a bit, you may feel like it. I remind myself that launching a new biz or idea or program is SO MUCH a process, not an event

I had a couple of conversations this morning with clients, one is a coach and one who isn’t. But both of them are dealing significant change, one in building a business, and one in just wanting to create some personal change in her life.

One of the things that I was remembering, and it’s something that I know, but it gets buried amongst the noise: when you’re changing, when you’re building a business, when you’re doing anything significant that is going to be different in your life and trying to make things different in your life, it’s a process, not an event. Change of any kind is a process, not an event. Especially for you coaches out there who are building businesses, you’ve got to remember that.

I have to remind myself of it, too. When we are changing things up, it doesn’t just happen, BOOM, like that. Back in grad school we called a punctuated equilibrium, meaning things kind of go along, go along, go along, and it feels like you’re just very gradually making process, and then all of the sudden, BOOM, you’ve shifted. That’s how change works, it’s that go along, go along, go along, then BOOM, you realize you’ve actually changed, even though it may not feel like it. That’s part of the process.

The process also goes up and down a lot, right? There’s a lot of that kind of motion. You’re not always going to feel like, “Oh, my God! I’m making great change!”

You’re actually going to feel pretty shitty some days and feel low. As my mom would say, that’s the nature of the beast of change. I think that’s important to recognize.

I said to my client this morning, actually, this was kind fun. She said things weren’t happening quickly enough in her business and its growth. She’s in her first year of coaching.

I said to think about when you just get pregnancy or you’re in your pregnancy. It takes a long time before you actually get the baby, the “final product,” so to speak. You’ve got to go through morning sickness, and nausea, and exhaustion, and sometimes tons of tests and uncomfortable situations, and worry, and doubt, and eating differently, and a whole host of things, right?

It’s hard.

It’s not just like you decide, “Ooh, I’m going to get pregnant,” and boom, you have a baby. It takes time to grow the baby. And even after it comes out, then you’ve got a whole new set of challenges you’ve got to deal with. That’s how growing a business is.

Just because you hang your shingle out and say, “Now, I’m in business,” or you make the decision that now you want to do an entrepreneurial life, that’s just the first step. It takes time to grow the baby, to grow the business.

That’s my little two cents for today. Change is a process, not an event. Be patient with yourselves. Growing a business takes time.