You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 90.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove podcast. The all inclusive podcast that teaches mindset and business tools. We'll help you rise as your authentic self. Be unshakable with your emotional freedom and unstoppable in achieving any goal and living your purpose. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. If you want to put your mental health first in life, relationships and business, you've come to the right place.

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Hi, my strong friends. I am back from Texas. That was so much fun. I went to the fearless business workshop. I can't tell you how great it felt to get around other people. Oh my gosh. I'm an extrovert and moving out to the coast for the last two years, I've been pretty isolated, not around a whole lot of people. So my energy was really draining pretty low.

 

Being able to go and be around other humans, oh my gosh. It felt amazing. And even better. These are all people that are in a similar space as me. We're all coaches, we're all business focused. We're people focused. We want to get out there, help as many people as we can. And we have to figure out how to make all this stuff work. So being able to be there with each other was amazing because we had similar interests, all the stuff to talk about.

 

Another cool thing is that since you're surrounded by a ton of coaches, guess what? You kind of get informal coaching on just about anything and everything you need right there in the moment. And as a coach, I'm giving back to them, doing the same thing. In four days I accomplished what would have probably taken me six months with any of my other coaches that are helping me. Cause I had everybody right there. It was so great. Over the course of the next several podcasts, I want to share some of the key takeaways that I had from that so that you all can benefit from all of the goodness that I got to experience.

 

Today I want to talk about benchmarking. I know there's a lot of people that talk about compare and despair. So they feel bad. Like they look at other people, other people's businesses, other people's lives, they compare, and then they start feeling really bad about themselves. Awful thing to do. I do not advise it at all.

 

One of the great things I learned as being a business coach for the last decade was the concept of benchmarking.

 

WHAT IS BENCHMARKING?

 

Benchmarking = Evaluating what you're doing against a standard.

 

Now in the science industry, we would do this a lot when we were testing samples. So you would have a sample and then you would look a standard. So let's say there was something that was like liquidy and we're looking at the turbidity of it. We would have a sample that would have a specific amount of turbidity. So the cloudiness of it, and you would see, okay, is this like that? Is it less than that? Is it more than that? You'd always have a standard to compare it against. Then you would know, do I need to adjust things? Or does this mean something about the sample? So when you're benchmarking your business or your life, you're comparing against a standard.

 

WHAT IS THE STANDARD?

 

Now this is where some people think, okay, compare and despair. If it's not exactly like the standard, there must be something wrong with what I have. The reality is there is no standard when it comes to business, there's no standard when it comes to life. We may think that there is, but that's clearly not the truth.

 

When I went to this workshop, one of the great things I got to see was that every one of the keynote speakers there or workshop leaders, they all had wildly successful businesses. They're all making somewhere between $300,000 and $15 million in revenue, in their businesses as coaches. Every single one of them was different. You couldn't compare yourself to any one of them and say, oh yes, I'm right. Or I'm wrong because you had another standard who was doing just as well in their business, if not even better. Now you have a whole variety of standards to compare yourself to.

 

What that means is there is no standard.

 

You can be whoever you want to be in business, you can create your business to look, however you want it to be. You can have your life look, however you want it to be. And you can still have the success that you want. Now. Not everybody wants to go on to make $15 million. Some people are perfectly happy making $50,000 a year because that's the lifestyle that they want. Again, revenue is not even a standard.

 

BENCHMARKING AS A BUFFET

 

What you can do with benchmarking in this type of a situation is just look at each one, look at all of the different components about them. It's like you go to buffet. There's so many different types of food that you can choose from. And then you just pick and choose the things that either you want to try, that you've never tried before or those things that you absolutely love that you can't wait to have on your plate.

 

When you're looking at other people's businesses, think of it like a buffet, what is it that you want to try? What are the things that you absolutely love? Put it on your plate. This is your whole life, right? Business impacts your life. Whether you want to look at that as the truth or not. I see it as true. You're allowed to think however you want to. You have 24 hours in the day, your business is going to take up some of those hours. You get to decide how many that is and how it spills over into the rest. Hopefully you get to the point where it doesn't spill over so that you can have that nice mental health break. Have that balance in your life. You even get to choose. If you want to work all seven days of the week, or if you only want to work one.

 

What you need to know is that you're a unique person, you have unique needs. What works for another person might not be an exact fit for you.

 

You may have a different vibe. You may have different risk tolerance. You have a different desired schedule that you want to have, or family considerations, different energy levels, your skill set. Maybe you have a huge skillset. Maybe you don't. Maybe you want to learn a lot of stuff. Maybe you don't. There is no right or wrong in this. It's just, what is the right fit for you? The same goes for your beliefs and your values and even the pace at which you like to go. Like when I moved out to the coast, I was looking for a little slower pace of life. Now I realize I want a little bit faster pace of life. It's all about experimenting to find the right fit.

 

The same is true for your potential clients. They have unique needs to each product service and service provider will be an exact fit when their needs are met. Don't be a copycat. Your exact combo for your business and your life is going to be the exact fit for you and the exact fit for your clients.

 

If something else already exists out in the world, allow the clients to go to that thing. When you create your own unique thing, there are going to be so many people that are going to be grateful because you finally created something that fits their lifestyle.

 

They might not have picked this other thing, or maybe they did. And they were just trying to shove their foot into that glass slipper. But it really wasn't a good fit. It caused them a lot of distress or discomfort. When you create your own unique opportunity, they're going to be grateful. It's going to be a great fit. It's going to be like their perfect pair of like sneakers. You know what I'm talking about? We all have that pair of tennis shoes that we've worn for years. It's the perfect fit. It supports us great. And we don't even have to think about it. When we go out in the world, we just know that it's reliable. We love it. We're happy with it.

 

WHAT TO BENCHMARK

 

When you are benchmarking other companies, I want you to think about five different aspects. Now there's a lot more than just these five, but I thought five was going to be plenty for this podcast.

 

1. Containers - How you're offering your products and services.

 

2. Positioning - who you are for your clients.

 

3. Content Approach -How you're delivering your message, your material.

 

4. Money - Revenue Targets, Profit Margins, Payment Strategies.

 

5. Mindset - Diversity of culture, business level and professions.

 

CONTAINERS

 

As I was there at this conference, one of the things that I'm paying attention to is finding out what are all of the different containers that people are using for offering their products and services. Now, I like to think about all of the stuff that we have to offer the world is like jelly beans, right? There's all sorts of different colors and stuff, but we have our own unique set of jelly beans. Now, when you look out in the marketplace, you're going to see different containers for jelly beans. It's like an Easter time. You might see like a bunny shaped container that is full of jelly beans. Or if it's Valentine's day, it might be a heart shaped container. Sometimes it has the Bean-boozled. Where it has all of the Harry Potter flavors. And there's like a little spinning wheel on it. It's making you try different flavors that you didn't want to try. It all still comes down to jelly beans. It's just, how do you package it? What kind of container is it in?

 

Some of the containers that I saw while I was there:

 

Courses -Live or recorded. It could be a recorded course. People can just purchase their ticket to that course and take it whenever they want to or show up in person, if it is a longer one. So if you think about like universities, even they will do a whole semester for one course. So a course is usually something pretty meaty, a smaller version of that is a workshop.

 

Workshops - usually just a few hours. The fearless business workshop was four days. So for me, that was almost more like a conference for me, but they were calling it a workshop. It contained individual workshops that would last anywhere from like an hour to two hours. There's usually like one topic for a workshop. And there's activities that you do. And you have an outcome at the end.

 

Programs - kind of like a workshop, but it is repeated over several weeks. It could be six weeks, nine weeks, 12 weeks.

 

Masterminds - This is where there is a common goal for the whole group of people. They get together for either an indefinite amount of time until each person can actually meet that goal. Or there is a specific quantity of time. So some people were doing a six month mastermind. People come in, they would do it at the end of six months, like, okay, done. But if the person hasn't completed their goal, they can re-enroll in the mastermind again, because it's still the same goal. It's just, they're not all the way done. And they want that extra support.

 

1:1 -You're spending a lot of time just with one person.

 

Memberships - So I offer the unshakeable memberships for men and women. This has a collection of courses and then some group coaching with me twice a week. I've seen different configurations of memberships. There are some where there are no courses whatsoever. It's just a group that gets together for coaching each week. And that's enough. Some people had a membership where there was a workbook and then coaching didn't have any courses. Membership is something that goes on month to month until someone feels like they have completed what they came for. You can also think about like gym memberships. There are some times that you want to go because it's maintenance of your body. So in coaching, it's usually maintenance of your mind or maintenance of your business. You might be building it. You might be improving it. You might just be maintaining it. And you like to have those check-ins every week.

 

Events - retreats are a great type of event that might just be a weekend long thing. This workshop, where it was four days long, that was also an event. And then conferences. So conferences are usually pretty big. It involves lots of different moving pieces. Each of these different types of containers are going to take a different level of effort on your part, one to build it. And then the second to actually run the event. If you are just one solopreneur, you'll want to think about the effort level that is included in fulfilling any of these. If you have a team you'll want to think about what type of load would go across each person. Is each person doing the right amount so that nobody is getting burnt out? Because we want to make sure that we put our mental health first.

 

Which Container is right for your client?

 

You'll also want to think about your clients, which container is going to work best for them. Now we could fall into a scarcity mindset and think, oh, nobody's going to want to come to my thing. But really those different containers are going to be the perfect fit for other people out in the world. It might be different times in their life where they might decide. Yeah, I really do want to do an event just so I can go be around other people that was partially where I was falling into it. I wanted to go for the education of course, to learn a bunch of stuff. But I wanted to go be around other people two years ago that might not have been the right container for me to choose because I was already around a ton of people. But now that I've felt isolation for, so it was exactly what I needed.

 

Get creative with your containers. Find the thing that's the right fit for you and the right fit for your clients.

 

POSITIONING

 

The next thing to benchmark, when you're looking at all of the other coaches, healers, or educators out in the world is your positioning. Positioning refers to like your own personality. So if you're a solopreneur, it's just you. If you have a whole team, then it's the personality of your business itself. So for some companies, some larger companies, they might have chosen like a cartoon character. So like, when you think about Disney, it's got Mickey mouse, right? Mickey mouse is all about fun and laughter and magic.

 

When you're a solopreneur and a business, you're thinking about your own personal personality. Many people will get hung up on trying to be something that they're not. They think that they have to act like everybody else. And when they show up like that, it doesn't feel natural and authentic. Like you can kind of feel the fake vibes coming off of that. I personally don't want to work with anyone that comes off as being fake.

 

So what is it about all of these different personalities? The cool thing that I saw while I was there at the workshop we had, oh my gosh, at least 10 to 15 people that were being either the speakers or the workshop leaders, all of them had a different position, a different type of personality for the participants. They (the participants) all liked different combinations of those.

 

So it doesn't have to be that you are liked by everybody that shows up. You just have to be liked by the people that really are into your vibe. I'm going to share some examples of what I saw. There is someone who calls herself the redneck weight loss coach. So she's all about being like a redneck. I love it. She's wildly successful. Social justice. There's the bad-ass and driven personality. There's also someone who's laid back who said, I don't really want to work that hard. I'd rather spend more time on my couch. I want to do the smallest amount of effort.

 

There are people that were very religious. We had people from the LDS community that were there. We had some people that were Christians and that was part of their business positioning. We had people that were spiritual all about the woo.

 

Someone said, I'm your favorite auntie and made you feel like you were going to her party. And there was plenty of food and joy and music. There, there are people that came off as being very high class and exclusive. So other people may automatically feel like they don't belong. And that was intentional. There are some people that are very strict and structured and there are clients out there that are really looking for that.

 

I personally like to be the calm in people's storms. So when their world's falling apart or they're getting totally stressed out, I'm their person that they can come to. I can help to calm them down. And then once they're calmed down, now we're going to get back into action and get the traction going and get their goal met.

 

Who do you want to be? Make sure that it really flows with your natural personality because people are going to be drawn to you uniquely you. It also helps you to show up consistently if this is who you really are to the core of you. There's no pretending. It's not going to be hard to come up with how you talk to people, how you interact with people. It's going to be natural. And there are people that are looking for your special sauce exactly as you are.

 

People may change who they need at any given point in their life. When I look at all of the different coaches that I've used and mentors that I've used throughout my life, if you get them all in the room, every single one of them is different because I needed someone different at each stage in my life. So just because someone might not come knocking at your business door right now, doesn't mean that they're not going to be coming a year from now when they need you and your special sauce the most.

 

CONTENT APPROACH

 

The next thing to benchmark was the content approach. I have been trying to work through one of my blocks, which is giving way too much information. I'm used to working in a regulated environment by the FDA. We had to have everything detailed down to like every specific little thing. People had to be trained left, right center, upside down every which way. That can be overwhelming to someone when they walk in, if there is too much to do.

 

I've been looking at different content approaches to try to scale back because I realized not every business owner has to deal with the regulations of the FDA that it's okay to scale back, do a smaller amount of it. It's interesting. I saw some of the coaches, there are also business coaches. I saw what their approach was and some of them were so scaled back. I thought, how is it even possible that someone would be able to figure out how to get their business up and running?

 

Some of them would have just one question, one activity. I mean, it's just a two hour workshop. Each of the speakers or workshop leaders had two hours and that was it. So of course you can't get a whole business up and running from two hours of time with someone, but it's looking at how did they put their content together within the two hours? I found that all of the ways were effective.

 

People that had just one exercise. It was enough. It kept everybody focused and it stays with you. I have one that has stayed with me ever since I went last week that now I'm thinking of. And now it's causing me to do a lot of changes in my business from one simple exercise.

 

There were other people that took us on a full journey that started with a high-level concept and then broke it down into the next series of things and the next series of things. And then we had an action plan at the end. That was pretty amazing too. Also done in two hours time.

 

Some of the people, it was all just verbal exercises or even having us close our eyes and visualize things. They didn't have anything for us to write down on. There were no worksheets, there were no spreadsheets. There was nothing. It was just close your eyes and visualize things. That was effective.

 

Some people used music and had us get up and dance. I thought, oh my gosh, really? Okay. But I actually love music and dancing. So I was very open to that. But even that was effective in moving us forward.

 

I've learned some people like to use recordings. Other people don't. I recently tried a rapid transformational therapy that provided a recording at the end. It was just like 15 minutes recording. But I listened to that every single day for 21 days, that's also a content approach. And for me, it's been very effective.

 

Some people are using workbooks. Some people are using checklists. Some people are using just theoretical concepts. Other people are using tactical steps and giving instruction. Some people, it really is just coaching - asking. ..So what do you think should come next? Why would you want to do that? It's just a series of questions.

 

And then some people have checklists or offering done for you services. There's going to be a specific combination of that. That's going to be perfect for you as a business owner, as a service provider, that's also going to be the perfect fit for your clients. Not everybody wants to go through the same thing. There's stuff that works for them differently. Some people are auditory learners and they want to have the auditory part of it. Others are visual learners and they need to have some kind of visual thing with maybe pictures, maybe there's movement in art, there's kinesthetic learners, whatever feels right for you is also going to be the perfect fit for your clients.

 

Feel free to experiment. Find what works.

 

MONEY

 

Benchmarking money approaches. There is no one size fits all in business. Not every business owner wants to go out and be a millionaire. Some people just want a comfortable lifestyle. Comfortable lifestyle is even subjective. There's no standard for what that is. I was reminded recently that one of my coaches, Brooke Castillo, who is incredibly successful at this point, she's making somewhere between 50 and 75 million, which just blows my mind less than 10 years ago. She sold all of her possessions and she and her husband, and two kids lived out of a van or an RV or something for a while. And they were traveling around the country and she's homeschooling and coaching clients. That's not what her life is now, but that's what a comfortable lifestyle was for her 10 years ago. That required a whole different revenue goal than what her current goals are.

 

Revenue Goals - Why were revenue goals important to different people? Why would they choose different targets? So for some people, they set these high goals just to see if it was possible. Just because they like the challenge of it. They like to try to use their mind to figure out what is the best way that I can deliver value to people that is so valuable that they're willing to pay this amount of money for it. Also to figure out like those different combinations of containers. What's those perfect sets and what is the perfect container? What's the perfect price offered at specific times so that I can create that revenue goal. It's like a puzzle to figure out, and it can be fun for people.

 

Other people had revenue goals because there was something that they wanted to spend their money on. Once they made that revenue for some people, they wanted to invest it in their business. So then they could go on to offer something else. They wouldn't be able to offer that thing because it requires a monetary investment. When I worked for Genentech, it was really important to make revenue so that they could invest the money in the research and development of a brand new drug. Each drug could take like eight years of research and development just to decide if it was a viable medicine or not. They wouldn't be able to do that. If they weren't making revenue from their existing products. Other business owners may have a business goal because they want to invest in philanthropies. They want to do good out in the world. And in order to be able to fund those philanthropies, they have to make money somewhere. So they have found some kind of skill that they're really good at. They do that skill because it's valuable and people want to pay money for that. And now they've earned money to go do the stuff that lights them up, that they're giving back to the world.

 

The one that really touched my heart was hearing about someone that had a child with special needs. They needed to be able to fund their child, going to a specific setting that would take care of their special needs that fueled them to go harder in their business. And when I say go harder, I just mean figure out more creative ways for being able to offer products and services out to the world that people really wanted to get that demand up so that she could make revenue that way so that she could take care of her kid. I have something very similar that drives me. I need to be able to have time so that I can take care of my kid. I have a kid that has autism. And so when she goes off to school, sometimes the school will call me during the middle of the day and say, you need to come get her. This was so hard when I was working in a corporation because I'm supposed to be there during their business hours. And yet my daughter needed me throughout the school day. So I have revenue goals to help provide for my family, but also schedule goals so that I can take care of my daughter and her needs.

 

Profit Margins- were another thing that came up when you're first starting out in a business, you're just trying to learn how do you even sell your products and services? So thinking about profit margins might not be the very first thing that you think about. We're pretty fortunate in the industry that we're in, where we're doing coaching or healing or educating is that we have options for how to keep our business expenses pretty low.

 

But sometimes we get caught up in the hype. We want to over-deliver for our clients. We want to give them extra trinkets or journals or sending goodie bags of things. I've had some of the coaches even send out expensive jewelry or want to create very elaborate retreats, very posh retreats. All of those offerings are an extra business expense. So I have learned of several that they were making a huge amount of revenue, but they only had about 20% of it that they got to actually put in their pocket. So they were spending so much money on giving a very wonderful experience to their clients. But when they walked away at the end of the day, they didn't have a whole lot left for themselves. Now, those of us that are in this industry, we tend to have pretty huge hearts. We want to do things for our clients. We want to spoil them. We want to give them those experiences that they can't get anywhere else. We want to make them feel like a million bucks, but we have to remember that we also need to take care of our own needs. So if your profit margins are so small, that you're having a hard time even taking care of your own household expenses, then you need to take a look at where do you really need to deliver? Like, can you scale back on some of that? What do the clients really, really need?

 

Payment Strategies - everybody has different containers that they're offering. All of them also had a payment structure. Some people would prefer to just have one payment that they get and it gives their clients lifetime access. This could be great. It could generate a huge amount of revenue all at one time, which could be fantastic for me. It makes me wonder about that lifetime access though. If I got paid all of that revenue in that very first year, and I say lifetime access, does that mean that year 2, 3, 4, 5, I'd still have to deliver all of that service, but I have no revenue coming in. So those people that are providing the lifetime access, they need to make sure that they continuously bring in new people that are going to be purchasing that product or service each year so that they always have revenue coming in.

 

Other people had programs that had a time duration. So a six month thing or a year thing, and it could be an all upfront payment, or it could be monthly payments, but there was an end. And then people would have to re-enlist if they wanted to do it again, or they would have to go and find more clients that wanted to do that same experience.

 

And then there were people that were like me, where they had a membership model. Membership model is nice because it brings in a set amount of revenue every single month. And people just stay in hopefully indefinitely, but at least for as long as they see fit for their needs. It gives you that plan predictable revenue stream. So any worry about meeting a minimum math number is off your shoulders.

 

One of the ahas that I had though, actually it was a bit more of a shocking aha was learning that some of the people that I had been watching for years that had the membership model, which is what had inspired me, that their retention rate was about five to seven months. So retention rate means how long did someone stay in their membership paying month to month? Now, my experience has been that if I joined a membership, I stay for a couple of years kind of loyal that way. If I find something I like, I just stick with it. Just like I found my favorite toothpaste. I am always going to buy that same toothpaste. In fact, I have Amazon set up for a delivery so that I always get that same one. It was surprising to me to learn that that's not how everybody approaches things.

 

There are some people that will come into a membership and they'll only stay for five to seven months. Important to know. I've been very fortunate in that the people that have joined my membership, there's a few that didn't stay for the long haul, but for the most part, people are staying with me for a year or more. I've only had these open for about a year. So I'm just going off of that set number. The membership that I've been in with Brooke Castillo, she has self coaching scholars. I've been in it for four years. I have no intention of leaving that membership because in my mind, I'm not done. I want to always have access to her and her other coaches and all of the new content that keeps coming out forever. Right? Like at some point I might consider I'm done, but I don't know when that's going to come. Just like if you're at a gym membership, at what point do you decide that you're done.

 

Think about those payment timings, what is right for you? Do you want to have a huge amount of money all coming in at the same time? Do you prefer a smaller amount, but it's coming in routinely all the time. It also will influence what your marketing is going to be like. And how many new clients you have to bring into your business. Find the thing that works for you.

 

Also consider what's going to work for your clients. There are some clients that prefer to just pay a big fee all at once and never have to think about it. Again, have lifetime access. Fantastic. Never have to pay for it again. There might be clients that they can't come up with that huge amount all at once. They actually prefer to have monthly payments, whether that's for a short amount of time, six months or a year, maybe they like the membership where it just becomes part of their routine, just like paying the electric bill or the water bill. It's just something that you do every month. And you're grateful that you have your electricity or your water or your business support or your yoga classes or whatever it is to take care of you, whatever you find that works for you. You're also going to have clients out there that it works perfectly for them.

 

MINDSET

 

The final part of my benchmarking that I did at this four day workshop is my favorite mindset benchmarking. If you've listened to some of my podcast episodes on mindset. So like episode number one, where I'm talking about a pain-free mindset, I also have ones on growth mindset or regaining your composure. I talk about thought shopping.

 

We can be very intentional with our thoughts. If we have thoughts that are not working for us, that either are causing us some distress, some depression, some anxiety, some anger even, and we decide that we don't want to feel that way anymore. We may want to go out and do thought shopping. So we're looking for other people that either have a similar circumstances us, or maybe they're trying to get the same type of result that we want going out and finding what are other ways that people are thinking about this that's giving them a different outcome.

 

That can be so helpful. Now I call it shopping because just like if you're clothing shopping, you're going to go out and you're going to see a ton of different shirts that you can try on. Not every shirt is going to be the perfect fit for you. Mindset's the same way. You're out, you're checking out different people's mindsets. Now, it's like their collection of clothes that's in their closet. Some of it you're really going to like what people have and then the rest of the stuff in their closet, you might not like. So when you are in a room full of people, it's like you have access to a thousand different closets, full of thoughts. Kind of like if you were to go to a mall to go shopping, there's so many different things, but not everything is going to be a fit for you. Some of the shops you won't even want to go into. So if you're around a whole lot of people, there might be some people that you don't even want to go and hear what they have to say. You don't want to know what their thoughts are.

 

Other people you're like, oh, this looks kind of interesting. I'll sit here. I'll listen to them for a little bit. Maybe they share 50 different thoughts with you. And 49 of them, you're like, yeah, no, don't want that. But one of them, one of them might be exactly what you needed. They're not only sharing their thoughts. They're also sharing their experiences with you. So I am a huge diversity, equity and inclusion advocate. I always want to have different people come to the table that have had different experiences. I want different cultural experiences. I want different socioeconomic experiences, even different trauma experiences is valuable to me because everybody's gone through something that I might not have gone through myself. And some of it I'm grateful I haven't gone through.

 

The thoughts that they had before---> the thoughts that they shifted to, those are the things that I'm interested in.

 

Because something there might be exactly what I needed to hear. So when I was there at this workshop, I'm listening also to their experiences and in business experiences are going to be huge for you. There are things that I went through during my first year of starting a business that helped me to figure out what processes I needed to have in place. It also helped me to figure out that there are some clients out there that are not a good fit for me. They may want my services, but it's not going to be healthy for me to take them on as a client.

 

If you can find those opportunities to just listen to other people, listen to the experiences that they've gone through. Listen to the thoughts that they have. Some of these are going to be applicable right away. You can adopt them into your mindset. Others, you might find that it doesn't apply to you just yet. It's not the right time for you.

 

One of the things that I observed is that even with the different amount of revenue that people were making in their businesses, they encountered different problems, different experiences. So people that had never even started a business before they had all sorts of other thoughts that were going on, that someone that had been in business for 15 years couldn't necessarily relate to anymore because they didn't remember what it was like. But when you have someone that had been in business for maybe a year or two, they remembered exactly what it was like before they started. They were able to have a better conversation and help each other.

 

Someone that was trying to make their first say $10,000 in their business. They had a lot of different experiences. Those ones could partner with people that had made $50,000 in their business, because that had a lot of different mindset shifts.

 

I like to spend time with people at all stages of their business, because some of them I could help. Some were sharing things that I could then help my clients with. I could anticipate what those challenges would be. I also like to spend time with people that were, you know, five steps ahead of me or 20 steps ahead of me because it's helping me to anticipate things that I'll run into. It might not pertain to where I am now, but when I can hear some of their thoughts, some of those experiences, it's like I can put it away, like in a little vault in my brain to get ready and to think about what was that thought. I may even create like a thought journal where I start to write these things down. Okay. So really it's just my regular journal. Things are kind of all mixed together. It's all chronological, but at some point I can pull those out and create like future list of thoughts for myself. That will be helpful for me, maybe three years from now. Maybe I don't need them right now, but there are definitely ones that I've heard that I needed right?

 

It wasn't even just about the different revenue levels. It was also about the different professions. So people that are starting their businesses in coaching and healing and educating, most of us had a previous career or several previous careers. I had a wonderful conversation with a doctor. She had some important thought shifts that happened during her career that were relevant for me as a business coach. It also was relevant to me for all of the work stress or work addiction that I went through.

 

When I was working in biotech, I felt responsible for other people's lives. In biotech, there was always some kind of medicine that was involved to save somebody's life. As a doctor, she was always about saving other people's lives. There was a point in her career where doctors were informed that they can no longer tell people the answers or the steps that they should take in order to save their lives or save their loved one's lives. Doctors were told to be more like in a coach role of presenting all of the opportunities and then asking that patient or the patient's family members, what would they like to try? What do they want to experiment? What decisions do they want to make? She was telling me how difficult that was for her, because she already knew what she would choose for that patient. And here it was like the weight of the world being put on to that person. Cause they don't know. They're not the expert. But they have to be in charge of their own result.

 

That same thing applies in business. I feel very responsible for other people and the success of getting their businesses up and running. Yet, it really is each individual business owner's responsibility to drive for their own results.

 

I can be there to present all of the options for them to support them along the way., But it really is their decision. They're responsible for their own outcome. I needed to hear this from somebody else, a different profession.

 

When you're benchmarking on mindset, consider that are there other professions to go and listen to. When I worked in biotech, I was coaching some of the heads of innovation. And that was one of the things that I'd have them do: look outside of biotech. Look at other industries completely to see what are they doing. Benchmark what they're doing, how they're serving their clients, because there could be an idea there that could get pulled into your own business.

 

BENCHMARKING IS BETTER THAN COMPARISON

 

I hope you can see how benchmarking can be so much better for you in your business than comparison. There is no standard. You get to create that unique combination. That's the right fit for you. You get to create that unique combination that is the right fit for your clients. They're going to be grateful to have this new option that only you can provide.

 

I highly encourage you to go out with a fresh set of eyes. When you're looking out at the possibilities. Don't go out and compare. No judging yourself, no causing shame or guilt. Look at it as a whole buffet of options. What is it that you absolutely love that you want for yourself? What are those things that you want to try?

 

I am an excellent resource. When it comes to benchmarking, not only have I spent years doing benchmarking and I can share with you all of the different examples for whatever you're looking for, I even have slide decks that I've created. These are things that I can share with you.

 

I invite you to reach out, set up some time for us to talk. Let's brainstorm what you need for you and for your business, for your lifestyle. Let's come up with the perfect solution for you. Set up some time by going to my website www.myfreedomgrove.com, go to the contact section of my website. There's a schedule there. You can set up some time for us.

 

My friends. I can't wait to share all of the extra tidbits that I got and little breakthroughs that I got in upcoming podcast episodes. I hope that you have a great week. Get out there, explore, learn, do all the fun stuff. Get your energy up. If you need to be around other people, it breathes life into you. My friends, I will talk to you soon. Have a good one. Bye-bye.

 

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove podcast.  I can't wait to work with you directly. I'll help you to be your authentic self, to have amazing relationships and to live your purpose. I invite you to check out Unshakable Men and Unshakable Women. The Unshakable programs will give you all of the tools, the coaching and the community to help you rise in life, relationships, and business. To learn more, go to my freedom grove.com/workwithme. I can't wait to see you there.