Stop Fighting Yourself: The Unexpected Power of Alignment

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Ever find yourself repeatedly avoiding certain business tasks, despite knowing they're "effective"? That resistance might be telling you something crucial about alignment.

In this deeply personal episode, I open up about my recent therapy journey and how it's transformed my understanding of business resistance. After shifting from coaching subscription box founders to working with online entrepreneurs, I found myself dreading the "proven" tactics of LinkedIn outreach and sales calls. This dread wasn't laziness—it was a misalignment with my authentic approach and energy.

Drawing from business leader Scott Alford's teachings on alignment, I explore how entrepreneurs often push through resistance, mistaking it for a mindset issue when it's actually a compass pointing toward what truly works for us. I share the moment I realized the hypocrisy of using high-pressure sales tactics to sell a program about non-pushy email marketing, and how this clarity helped me reframe my entire approach.

The most profound insight? Sustainable business isn't just about doing the work—it's about choosing work that energizes rather than depletes you. I outline my shift toward genuine connections, value-first engagements, and nurturing relationships through email and community building—methods that honor my strengths while still achieving business goals.

This episode offers a gentle reframe for entrepreneurs feeling stuck: perhaps you're not broken or undisciplined—you're simply bumping up against methods that don't match your energy anymore. If business has felt heavy lately, I invite you to consider what alignment might look like for you. Your resistance might be your greatest teacher.

Has this resonated with you? I'd love to hear your thoughts—reach out directly at gary@garyredmond.net and let me know if you'd like more episodes exploring the inner game of entrepreneurship.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Podcast Introduction

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome back to Unbox the Inbox with me, your host, gary Redmond. On this podcast, you'll learn how to grow your subscription business using the power of free and mostly automated email marketing, and we'll hopefully have some fun doing it too. I'm a co-founder of BusterBoxcom and also a mentor and coach helping founders like me and you create their dream life through their online business. So today I want to talk about something a little bit different, a little bit personal and a little bit more mindset orientated. Okay, so, um, this is just something that came up for me this week. It's not really much of a strategy, it's more like a noticing Um. So for those of you who don't know, I don't think I've talked about it on this podcast like over the last six months or so, I decided to start investing in therapy and it's really, really good, I have to say.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Say it's been a life-changing experience to really take a look at yourself and your own ways of thinking and some of the beliefs that you would have had growing up that shaped the way you feel about yourself, the way you act, some of your impulses and and really how that actually intersects with your business and how you know when you get to a certain level of business, particularly if you're like a coach or consultant or expert, like a lot of your business is done like solo, so you're kind of by yourself, left with your own thoughts, and I've been listening to podcasts about this recently. I've been, I've been hearing a lot about it. Like you know that really, the problem usually is between your ears and you're usually in your own way. And this is so true for me over the years, when I look back, like self-sabotage and constantly trying to prove to myself that I can do it, rather than kind of maximize like I told you this before like this time before, when I used to like, like was getting good at like doing webinars, and instead of just getting really good at doing webinars, I was like, oh okay, I've proved to myself now that I can, you know, sell coaching or my course via webinars. I'm going to go and try all these other strategies just to pretty much prove to myself that I can do it, which was basically a low self-worth and a self-sabotaging pattern of chasing shiny objects when I wasn't quite getting as much money as I kind of wanted from the webinars. Anyway, it's basically just a lot of things that I've been seeing in myself and I've been reading a lot about it, listening to a lot about it, and it's just around how your mindset can intersect with your business. So this led me to discover something recently from a guy called Scott Alford, a really high level business person, and he talks about alignment. Okay, so alignment is like when you're, when you're, misaligned, you have resistance. Okay, you have a part of your business that feels like a bit of a brick wall and no matter how many to-do lists you make, there's something you just keep avoiding. Okay, and that was me this week.

Speaker 1: 2:39

So for me, it was the dread around, like what I'm doing right now. Since I switched from coaching subscription box founders predominantly, I'm starting to try and coach new, like online business and like coaches, consultants, those kind of people. So for me I was like what's the best strategy for me to sort of get going with that? And I figured out that it's probably LinkedIn, because with LinkedIn, you can just kind of brute force it for a little while. You can send out connection requests, you can use Sales Navigator to find coaches and consultants and you can, you know, connect with them and just engage with them, send them a DM and then try and get them on a call. So that was fine.

Speaker 1: 3:19

But you know it was. You know you're kind of like that's kind of getting scrappy with what you need to do if you want to get some people in the new industry, but it was really bringing up a lot of resistance for me. Like, I was really really dreading coming in and having to reach out to people, having to sort of feel that salesy sort of another one of these arseholes in the DMs. Like you know, sending people pitches and stuff, so like it was just causing me a lot of resistance. Like you know, sending people pitches and stuff, so like it was just causing me a lot of resistance. Like you know really didn't want to do it a lot of energy draining and it wasn't new, like I felt it before. So usually you know, you tell yourself you know, don't be a little bitch, push through your resistance. You know like, and sometimes that's fine, sometimes you just need to do the dirty work Right. But what I actually thought was, like what's actually going on here? Okay, like and it really came back to that word of alignment, what I've been looking into.

Speaker 1: 4:11

So it's like the idea that maybe you know your business doesn't have to be a struggle. And again, going back to some times in my own past, like you know where you might've felt, like you know you really needed to struggle to make money, or it always has to be difficult. It's hard to get money and it's hard to do things you know and like does take work, of course, but you know, struggle sometimes is a mindset, not necessarily a, you know, a symptom of what's going on, um, or a net or a necessity to get where you want to go. So you know, when you're feeling resistance, maybe it's not because you're lazy or undisciplined or you don't want it enough, like which is sometimes what I teach myself Maybe it's just you're out of sync with what you, what you really want.

Speaker 1: 4:54

So like I think I've mentioned this before like I had a mentor a few years ago and I was selling a $1,000 course and I wanted to get to 10K a month, a magical 10K a month, and it was like, yeah, you'll close one out of three calls and you just take 30 sales calls a month and you'll get 10K. I'm like what? I'm like running a full-time business here, like subscription box business. I don't have time for that. So for a while I believed that. But you know, over time running my coaching business for subscription box people, I found lots of different ways that I didn't actually have to get on sales calls usually around email marketing, running launches, doing Google Doc, asynchronous sales around email, and I know that works okay. But this week and last week I noticed myself slipping back into that old pattern to get scrappy mode, like in a rush, basically to get clients in, instead of just like being aligned with what I want to do long-term, which is what I already do, what I teach email selling asynchronous sales. By asynchronous I mean no sales calls. You know selling via Google Docs, having a relationship with people via email, and you know using that sort of model to grow my business and to get and retain clients.

Speaker 1: 6:13

So when I found myself sending DMs and trying to book sales calls just because I wanted to get into a new industry, it's like, oh, the resistance hit me really hard, not because I don't want clients, because I don't want to get them doing something that drains me, not because I don't want clients, because I don't want to get them doing something that drains me. And I think it's a lot of something that a lot of us feel but don't always name. And so if business has felt a little heavy for you lately, I want to offer you a gentle reframe today. Maybe it's not a mindset issue, maybe it's simply a misalignment issue. Okay, so here's another few ways that I spot it in my own work.

Speaker 1: 6:45

So when I keep avoiding the same task over and over again, and when content feels like a chore not an expression when I know the right move but everything in me resists doing it, and when I leave a workday feeling depleted, even if I checked everything off. So, like you know, getting scrappy in the DMs probably is more effective for getting some clients quickly, but I didn't really factor in how much it was going to drain me and how it's just not aligned with what I want to do. And it's just. If I'm just patient enough to follow my own strategy, then it will work for me. And also like for me, it was kind of like it made me start to think like why would I be the hypocrisy of it as well?

Speaker 1: 7:39

Like to be like in the DMs trying to get people on sales calls, and it made me like, and then to tell them that you know, I help people sell via email and not do sales calls. It was like it was so misaligned and then it made me think sell the email and not do sales calls. It was like just so misaligned and then it made me think, oh, maybe I should just, I should just teach people how to do this. No, I almost made me rethink my entire offer, and by this I mean sending dms to people and getting them on calls and selling. It's like, oh, that also drained me, like the thought of having to teach people to do that, you know. So thought of having to teach people to do that, you know. So, yeah, it kind of just made me think and realize that I'm not broken. And if this is you, you're not broken either. You're just bumping up against a model that doesn't match your energy anymore.

Speaker 1: 8:23

So here's my shift that I'm going to do, and it's going to be from a place of offering value and building my audience and then keeping it sustainable for me, okay, sustainable for my energy. So I'm going to send a DM and people to book calls. I'm going to send genuine connection requests. I'm going to genuinely engage with their content and then I'm going to reach out and I'm going to offer them a lead magnet or a resource or community community, which I have my school community with and my free course around sending emails to generate sales and clients, and then I'm going to continue the conversation, softly, through email, okay, and engage with them in the community and make my community the ground zero where I give my best content. So still relational, still active, but it actually feels like me, and what I'm remembering is it's not just about doing the work, it's about choosing the work that you'll want to keep doing. So that's where I'm at Like a bit of a different episode today, honoring the resistance, listening to it and realigning.

Speaker 1: 9:27

So, if you like this episode, if this is some sort of anger you'd like me to keep going down, please let me know. If you're feeling this too, I'd love to hear what you're shifting to or softening to. So no pitch here whatsoever, just presence. If you want to chat with me, my inbox is open, gary, at garyredmondnet, and I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. And you know, maybe I also am. You know, sometimes even I'm guilty, when I'm creating this podcast, of kind of creating content that I think people will want rather than what I think is resonating with me at this point, which always, you know, is easier to just speak about what's on your mind, if it's relevant to your audience, than to constantly be looking for things to talk about and different topics you know. So let me know if this is a good episode and, yeah, I'll see you next week.