Who do you need to become to get what you want?
Most business owners I coach want to know what to do to grow. More leads, another salesperson or a better system. Those are reasonable things to want. More often, though, the owner already knows what needs doing but hasn’t done it.
To explain that gap, we use a formula: BE × DO = HAVE. What you HAVE (your results) comes from what you DO, and this is shaped by who you are BEing while you do it. The multiplication sign is deliberate. If your BE is weak, adding more DO barely moves the result. Double the phone calls made by someone who dreads making them and you get twice as many half-hearted calls.
What “BE” actually means
It’s tempting to hear “who you are being” as a vague idea about mindset. In practice it has four parts:
Beliefs are what you hold to be true about yourself, your customers, money and what’s possible. An owner who believes all clients buy on price will discount before anyone has asked. An owner who believes the work is worth more, will hold their price.
Values are what you prioritise when two good things compete. Many managers avoid a hard conversation with an underperformer because they value harmony and loyalty. Those are good values. The trouble starts when they quietly outrank fairness to the rest of the team. Avoidance is often a values conflict that nobody has named.
Identity is the story you tell about who you are. Statements like “I’m not a salesperson” or “I’m the one who fixes everything” limit your behaviour. A business owner who sees themselves as the best technician in the business will keep doing the technical work while the strategic work waits.
Skills are the part people tend to leave out. Confidence doesn’t grow in a vacuum. It’s hard to believe you can win a big contract if you’ve never learned to handle objections, and hard to raise your prices if you can’t explain your value clearly. Building a skill changes what you believe about yourself.
When a result isn’t moving, one of these four is usually the constraint. The job is to find out which one.
Working on your BE
Start with the action you keep avoiding, and ask yourself four questions:
1. What do I believe that makes this feel risky?
2. Which of my values is this action in conflict with, and does that value really matter more here?
3. Who would I need to see myself as to do this without forcing it?
4. What skill am I missing that would make this easier, and where can I learn it?
The answers tell you what to work on. Sometimes it’s a belief that needs testing against evidence. Raise the price on your next three quotes and see what actually happens. Rehearse the performance conversation until it no longer feels like a confrontation. Improve the standard you’ve let slide in yourself that you would never accept from your team.
Doing more is the natural response when results stall. But if you’ve added effort and the numbers haven’t followed, look at the multiplier. The version of you that got the business to where it is today built it on a particular set of beliefs, values and skills. The next stage will probably need some different ones.
TAKE OUR SHORT SCORECARD AND FIND OUT WHO YOU NEED TO BE AND WHAT TO DO TO ACHEIVE WHAT YOU WANT.
Details: www.actioncoachinala.com; durbannorth@actioncoach.com; 031 942 4255
