The Top Business Advantage – Be Your Authentic Self
The Strategic Coach Team
Listen to the podcast below or subscribe to the Multiplier Mindset Podcast on iTunes.
The Power Of Bringing Your Authentic Self To Your Business with Jill Young
Jill Young was raised in an entrepreneurial family—“raised by the wolves” as she says.
From a young age, she came up with creative ways to earn money, and at fourteen, she made an astute suggestion regarding the family’s small business that ended up paying off.
Her dad was always supportive and inviting of her curiosity, and her entrepreneurial roots provided a foundation for her career path. Today, Jill is an EOS Implementor, which stands for the Entrepreneurial Operating System. She’s a business coach who helps business owners get everything they want out of their businesses, which helps her fulfill her purpose too.
Taking the leap to join the Program.
Now that she’s in Strategic Coach, she looks back and wonders how much more her family’s business could have grown with the tools and concepts she’s learning in the Program.
She admits, however, that it took emotional and financial courage to join Strategic Coach in the first place. She went back and forth about whether to register because she wasn’t sure it was the right time as she hadn’t yet decided what she wanted to do with it and where she wanted to go. A great conversation with her Membership Advisor led to a change in thinking, and she realized she could come into Coach ready to explore those possibilities.
Jill decided to jump right into The 10x Program with Dan Sullivan, getting on the fast-track to 10x growth, rather than starting at the Signature level because she felt it would increase her commitment, both emotionally and financially. And, like earlier gambits in her entrepreneurial career, this too paid off. In her very first quarter, she made back her investment in the Program by implementing suggestions and ideas she learned in her workshops.
Find out how to unearth your authentic self with our Beginner’s Guide To Unique Ability®.
From courage to confidence.
In her first year in the Program, Jill moved from courage to confidence. When it came to making big decisions, she used to second-guess herself. But now, instead of considering herself last, after everyone else in her life, she’s totally confident in making big decisions that serve her. And Jill found that once she became confident in making those big decisions, she was able to serve her clients with that confidence as well, in turn helping them to gain confidence in making their own big decisions.
One way she’s making decisions that serve her has to do with how she shows up with her clients. Early on, she felt the world needed her to adapt to it. She tried to emulate other successful people, but this led her to being something she wasn’t.
When Jill had the opportunity to coach a $40 million company, self-doubt crept in, as she had previously only worked with smaller companies. “What do I know about that?” she asked herself. To make up for the lack of experience she felt, she decided to show up physically in a way that she thought would give her the appearance of power and confidence: “I had to have the best hair and the best makeup and the best suit that had to match the best shoes, and if I showed up like that, they would think I was powerful and confident enough to coach them.”
From high heels to Chuck Taylors.
But after discovering her Unique Ability through Strategic Coach—she’s super curious, very optimistic, and has a unique energy about her—she acknowledged that those things had nothing to do with how she was showing up in a stuffy suit with heels.
“And so, as I ventured into being the authentic me, my business grew,” she says. Instead of telling her clients what she thought they wanted to hear or using the words she thought she should use according to some script, she said what needed to be said in her uniquely optimistic, curious, energetic way. And as she freed herself up to be her true self, she found that her wardrobe changed as well. Now, the only way she coaches is in Chuck Taylors. She has ten different pairs—and her clients love them.
Dan Sullivan, founder and president of Strategic Coach, shares a similar sartorial transformation. For a decade, he curated a wardrobe of elegant Harry Rosen suits. But he realized that wasn’t really how he wanted to operate. Now, when he coaches his workshops, he wears a sweater, slacks, and—like Jill—very comfortable shoes. He recognizes that it’s all about his clients, and he puts all his emphasis on how he can create value for them rather than focusing on how he thinks he’s “supposed” to show up.
Dan advises, “Anything that you put between yourself and the most direct, most authentic communication with your clients prevents you from being successful.”
Jill found that in shedding the world’s expectations of her, she could be her authentic self and better serve her clients. It was both beneficial for her business and a personal transformation.
Through discovering her Unique Ability, she realized that the best thing she can show up as is herself. Her advice to other entrepreneurs? “Whatever piece of you that is authentic, that you’re not bringing to work, that you’re not bringing to your entrepreneurial organization, bring it.” No longer will she be one way at home and another way at work. “Bring a piece of your authenticity into your work life,” she says, “and see how that changes how you show up for your clients and customers.”
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