What Is Aligned Action?
Definition: An intentional mindset in entrepreneurship that creates an easier framework from which to be in relationship with your business so you can achieve the goals and metrics you want.
The Aligned Action Podcast's inaugural episode talks about how you can have permission to do things your way in business, feel purposeful in how you help your clients, and get to the other side of entrepreneurship blocks.
Welcome to the first episode of the Aligned Action Podcast. I am so grateful for the opportunity to spend this time with you today and talk with you on this brand new platform. If we've connected before, thank you for taking this next step and bringing me around your day in your earbuds listening to this podcast. And if we haven't met yet, I'm Chantelle and I want to thank you for trusting me to try out this episode based on the title.
You might be wondering… what even is Aligned Action? So this episode is going to be dedicated to talking you through that framework. I'm going to start with what Aligned Action isn't about because that might give you a better understanding of the idea.
When I started doing market research for this podcast, I talked to many people about the terms ‘conscious entrepreneur’ and ‘intentional entrepreneur’ and ‘intuitive entrepreneur’ and a lot of people actually told me that that idea was a bit triggering because it made them question whether it applied to them or not, and my purpose with Aligned Action and with aligned business in general is not to turn it into one of those ideas for you.
Aligned Action is not about perfection, it's not about flawlessness and it's not an unattainable ideal. We have enough of those, right? It's also not one more thing that you have to get done or add to your to do list and it's not something that you need to put pressure on yourself for. It's not even about creating expectations that you have to work hard to live up to. And it's definitely not about never making mistakes. It's not even about trying to be as successful as that person on Instagram, promise.
Here's what Aligned Action is about. I’m going to split up the term in two and first talk about the first half of the framework and podcast, which is alignment as I define it. It is a way of thinking about your business in two key ways, one in that all parts of your business are in relationship to one another, or aligned with one another and number two, your business is in relationship with you. Which just means that you're aligned to your business and your business is aligned to you.
Most importantly, this isn't a question of you either have it or you don't. Alignment is a skill and a mindset that you're going to develop and improve and practice over time. The second half of this framework and podcast concept is action.
So to get into this, some entrepreneurs struggle to come up with ideas. I promise if you're listening to this, you are not one of those entrepreneurs. Good ideas may be hard to find, but you already have those, that's not your problem. I know this because I've spent hours with emerging business owners in my 1-1 work, I've worked with about 100 clients at this point and I know that I attract idea generators.
So if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably full of ideas. You're like Ariel from the little mermaid. You want thingamabobs, I've got 20. Except with business ideas, right? Where you struggle is with turning your ideas into reality and that's where action comes in.
Action, in terms of this framework is about taking an idea that you have, okay, maybe you've written that down in a notebook, maybe you've journaled about it or meditated on it. The action part of that idea is when you go deeper into relationship with it, when you're adding layers of meaning, you're taking that idea, you're expanding it, you're letting the idea grow within you and also outside of you into a set of tasks that you add to your to do list or your calendar or your asana app.
You're really experiencing that idea. You're turning it into maybe a practice or habit or behavior or you're taking an idea and turning it into an achievement or a new service or a new direction for your business. So Aligned Action together then - as a concept and as a podcast - is about that process of taking an idea, ensuring that it fits with you, it fits with your business as a whole and then having that idea become a reality where it actually lives outside of yourself in the real world. It becomes real for you and it becomes real for other people.
I wasn't always super skilled at this. I started off as an entrepreneur with a yoga business and Aligned Action wasn't even a thought back then, which is really ironic because obviously yoga is all about alignment, but I had not discovered this concept of this mindset or this way of thinking.
My alignment was really off. I had so many parts of my business and they weren't really aligned to each other, I had so much random! At one point I was focusing on the concepts or the main messages of self care, essential oils, water yoga, in-person classes, offering personalized videos and doing bridal yoga. I didn't really understand which of those was most aligned with me in the moment. And so the business wasn't aligned to me and actually the business wasn't really aligned to anything which was a real problem.
And the action side of things was off too. So what I found I was spending my time doing wasn't actually working. I was spending my time trying to learn about business, but I was focusing on topics that were way above my weight class. I was listening to podcasts on scaling and on all sorts of systems and on delegating and I was brand new and I didn't really make any sense.
I was also focusing like 99% on learning and only 1% on doing. And that balance was not what I needed, it wasn't what was working for me at the time. This was 4.5 years ago or so when I had this this business and thinking back to the alignment that I had with a lack of alignment that I had, I really should have seen sooner that I wasn't even aligned at all with having a business based on yoga.
I thought I was because you know, I loved practicing yoga and I loved coming up with sequences and I loved you know bringing yoga to rural communities which is where I was teaching, but based on where the focus of my time was actually being spent, what I was really spending my time doing in my business, I could have maybe (if I'd been paying attention) seen sooner that I was actually aligned with a web design business.
There were lots of outside signs of this that I ignored and the yoga part of things or well the whole business was yoga and so the whole business just wasn't the best use of my skills and gifts. In retrospect yoga probably could have stayed a self care practice that I had for myself and not my first business venture because it just didn't fit with where I was at. I wasn't in the right mindset and obviously that's pretty important in yoga.
You might be wondering… what did this, what did this amount to? How did I get from yoga teacher to where I am now? And what happened in that yoga business with the wrong kind of alignment and the wrong kind of action? What did that lead to for me? Not a whole lot.
I had really low income, I'm talking 12,000 Canadian in one whole year. I had really low satisfaction and what I had a lot of was frustration. I felt frustrated pretty much constantly because it seemed like there was this kind of endless struggle for me to try to make a whole living off of getting, you know, people to come to yoga classes in really small towns of 200-500 people. And I was, I was really focused on just, you know, how can I get more people, like more feet on mats (to kind of use the butts in seats expression!) feeling frustrated as you can imagine. Feeling frustrated all the time. This didn't really lead me to be inspired in my business. It just led me to be overwhelmed all the time.
And a lot of my first year in business was really defined by overwhelming frustration because I hadn't figured out the alignment with me or my alignment to the business and I hadn't figured out which actions to take that would actually move me forward.
I would act on any idea, as you probably could figure out from me, talking about essential oils and self care and bridal yoga and videos and all the things. And I was operating from this mindset that I was thinking that, you know, this idea would be the one and this would save me and this would save my business, but I didn't actually pause to ask myself which ideas should I focus on.
I didn't pause to think about which course of action was the best I would buy, all sorts of courses and coaching calls and products, but I never stopped to think about what I actually needed. I would spend a lot of time learning through podcasts and youtube videos and blog posts and books. But, I wasn't really on the right subjects and I wasn't in the right frame of mind to receive that information to respond to it. And I think at the root of all of this was that I wasn't in a relationship of trust with myself. I didn't understand my intentions well enough to align anything to them. And I didn't, I didn't go deep enough into any idea to really act wisely on any of my ideas, which is why the business felt a little bit thrown together.
And so my first business was a flop - and I'm okay with that because I learned a lot. Eventually what happened was that I just did less and less and less teaching of yoga and more and more of what the universe was sending my way in terms of inquiries about web design and branding, because I had created my own website for my yoga business and that part was successful. That part, you know, people were asking me questions and people were engaged with it. And you know, in retrospect now, I see, you know, the universe was throwing me all of these signs, you know, throwing small rocks at first and then larger and larger rocks to say, hey, you should pay attention to this.
This might be something that's in alignment with you based on the success that you're having with it, based on the response that you're getting based on how you feel when you're doing it. As I transitioned out of that yoga business and into the web design business, I got a lot better at listening to myself, trusting myself trusting my feelings. Taking the right kind of strategic actions on the ideas that I had. And that's when everything started to turn around.
What eventually happened was that I unconsciously added that concept of listening, trusting, finding truth, strategic action. I added that to my deliverables for my 1-1 clients. I helped everyone I was building websites for or brands for to do the same. That concept became a part of working with every client, whether we were working on a website or brand or working on building their business strategy and foundations.
I help my clients know their truth and take action towards what expresses that truth best. And the reason that I am qualified to do this now is that I had to learn the hard way how to do that for myself, how to know my truth and take action towards what expresses that truth best for me. And along the way I did that with many, many clients.
And what's exciting now is that I'm going to help you do the same via this podcast. I will help you to go deeper into conversation with yourself. My goal is that through listening to this show, you're going to learn to ask the right questions when you're in conversation with yourself, so that you know what's really aligned for you.
A pattern for me is - a life pattern based on my human design chart - is to turn struggles into lessons and to turn hardships into opportunities, possibilities to see possibilities for myself and for other people that they may not see for themselves. Through that gift, I've learned to ask the right questions with my one on one clients so that they can find those possibilities. And I've learned to really know my way around self inquiry and questioning through this podcast.
I'm going to talk strategies and options with you because I think it's important for you to decide for yourself what you want to pursue. This isn't the type of podcast where I'm going to tell you that you have to do this in order to succeed. It's just not something that I believe. I think that it's a much better, it's much better alignment really for you to learn how to decide for yourself what it is that you want to do next through a variety of exercises and topics and stories and experiences.
I'm going to help you turn all of those notebooks that you have that are full of ideas into real possibilities for a business that actually fulfills you. So it's not just about the metrics, it's not just about the money, it's also about the meaning. You want a business that has depth and it has purpose and also that it has clients, income and success.
I know that that possibility is real for you. My why for aligned action is this: for you to know yourself more deeply, for you to take your own ideas even more seriously than you already do, to have the skills and the determination to transform the ideas that you have that are most aligned into exactly what the world needs now and what fulfills you through your business.
I want that for you, but more importantly, you already want that for you. I know that if you're listening to this, you want that and you just need help figuring out how. As a listener of this podcast, I'm hoping that you will be empowered to choose your own adventure. Actually, I'm more than hoping - I’m setting that intention as I'm recording this very first episode, that you will be empowered to choose your own adventure as you listen.
Think of it as practice for choosing your own adventure in business, which I'm going to be teaching you along the way. That means that what isn't an alignment with you or your business that you hear on this show, you can give yourself permission to skip. You don't need my permission. You can definitely decide that for yourself.
But I also hope that you'll discover the clarity that you're looking for in knowing which ideas to pursue. I know that often, you know, at various points in business, you'll feel stuck, you'll feel scattered, you'll feel like you're further behind than you want to be. You'll feel tempted to compare yourself to other people. You know, we've all done that. I know that you feel sometimes that you're missing some secret. The secret truly is the clarity that you already have within you. You just need to be able to hear it. And once you're able to hear it, you know which direction you're meant to be going in and you'll be inspired to take action based on that direction.
And after discovering that clarity, the idea is that you'll be inspired to take action both during and after these episodes. You're going to hear a lot of concepts within the episodes in this show. Some of them you're going to feel drawn to, you'll feel magnetically attracted or you feel pulled to, or you'll feel excited about ideas, or you'll feel like you want to tell somebody else about it, or you'll feel like you want to re listen to it, you want to go deeper.
And for those episodes that do for the line for you that give you those signs, click on the links and those show notes, the ones that make you feel curious, log into the podcast community, download the resources. That sounds best to you. You know, I encourage you to search up the guests that spark some kind of possibility for you. I hope that you listen to the episodes that speak to you in whatever order, at whatever pace.
You know what you are meant to be listening to, to be taking in to be responding to and to be taking action on. Aligned action is a skill set, it's a mindset, it's a path to making it in entrepreneurship without getting stuck in one place for too long and without going off too far in the wrong direction - because that's important too. More than anything, it's permission to build your business your way and to keep growing it in ways that make sense for you.
I recently had a client write a testimonial that made me cry, which actually doesn't happen all that often. (I’m not I'm not much of a crier.) But the reason that the testimonial really struck a chord for me is that she described the transformation in her mindset about how she went from being afraid of making mistakes and overwhelmed all the time to feeling like she could nurture her business as a living thing. And that she wasn't overwhelmed anymore or afraid of making mistakes. She was actually excited to take action because she was thinking about business in a whole other way and that’s the transformation that that client and I were able to achieve together.
I'm putting the intention out there for you to have that transformation in listening to this show. Because all parts of your business are in relationship to one another and in relationship with you. And the more that you strengthen that relationship, the more that you can nurture it and grow a stronger business so that you can feel confident in what you're doing and you can feel happy with how you're spending your days, you can feel purposeful as you are helping your own clients.
I know that that's something that's possible for you, no matter where you're starting from right now, you might be feeling more struggle than success right now. And I want you to know that I hear you, I acknowledge you, I get what it's like to try to build a business when you are trying to force things. Right? When it feels like a fight, when there's all this resistance and confusion and frustration where you're trying to find meaning or purpose in what you're doing, or you know that purpose, but you're having trouble cramming that purpose into a business that actually makes money. Been there too.
The way that I found to work through these patterns and work through these struggles - to get to the other side of all of these blocks, is Aligned Action. That's why I am so excited to have the opportunity to teach it to you - to be in community with you through this show.
I want to thank you for listening to episode one. I am so grateful that you've spent this time with me. If what I've been describing in this show so far feels aligned for you, you're going to want to listen to episode two next. I'm sharing a lot more details about what you can expect from the weekly episodes of the Aligned Action podcast. You'll see that I'm a details kind of person. And so I'm really going to be transparent with you in the next - well in every episode. But in the next episode I'm going to be really transparent about what you can expect so that you know what you are getting into as you start to listen.
As a final thought, think of listening to this episode as the beginning of an action. Of it counting as the beginning of an action. You've already accomplished something just by pressing play and by being present.
