Business Blasphemy
Sarah Khan, Business Advisor and Leadership Consultant, is calling B.S. on the hustle-focused status quo of business and entrepreneurship, and getting real about what it takes to grow a business or career and NOT become a statistic. In each episode, Sarah helps navigate the rampant B.S. that permeates business strategy, marketing, operations, and mindset that has business owners hustling and pivoting themselves into burnout. She cuts through the noise and gives you guidance on how to view the status quo with a more discerning eye. If you're ready for success without the B.S., buckle up for hard truths, fun rants, terrible puns and (more than) the occasional curse word.
Business Blasphemy
EP112: You're Not Broken. The Strategy Is.
They don't want you to know this, but --- you don't need to fix your mindset to make the strategy that high ticket coach sold you work. You need a strategy that actually fits YOUR identity.
In this mini-rant of an episode, I dismantle the self-help industry's most profitable lie: that you're the problem.
I break down why most strategies fail ambitious women, and why personal growth should NEVER be a prerequisite for progress.
If you're tired of trying to become someone else just to succeed, this one's for you.
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The Business Blasphemy Podcast is sponsored by Corporate Rehab® Strategic Consulting.
Hello, hello, blasphemers, welcome back to Business Blasphemy, the only podcast where we don't just challenge the status quo, we set the fucker on fire All right. Before we start, I want you to stick around because I have a giveaway that I would love for you to participate in, so stay tuned for that. I'm going to talk about that towards the end of the episode, but today I want to talk about something that has been marinating in my mind for a while, and it's something I see over and over again, especially with ambitious women, the kind of women who have done absolutely everything right. They play the game better than most. They still find themselves stuck and second guessing and doubting or cycling through strategy after strategy, wondering why nothing really works.
Speaker 1:I want to start with something Peter Drucker said, and no, I promise this is not going to be a business school lecture. He famously said culture eats strategy for breakfast Translation. It doesn't matter how sharp your strategy is, if the culture of the organization doesn't support it, it's going to fail, period. And I want you to think about that not just in the context of business or teams or companies, because it's valid there, but I want you to think about it in the context of you yeah, you, because just like an organization, you have a culture too. I call it your self-leadership, your internal culture, your internal operating system. It's your beliefs, your habits, your vision, your patterns, your capacity, how you show up for yourself and what you truly think you are capable of. And if that inner culture isn't aligned with the strategy you're trying to execute, it doesn't matter how smart the strategy is, it doesn't matter how expensive your coach was, it doesn't matter how many certifications you've collected or how many hours you've journaled it's all going to fall flat. Here's what I see happening far too often. You hire a coach, you buy a course, you download a template, you attend a mastermind, you get hyped on a new strategy and when it doesn't work, you don't question the strategy, you don't question the coach, you question yourself. You assume the failure means something about your mindset that maybe you're just not believing hard enough. So what do you do? You throw more money at mindset work. You try to high-vibe your way into making the strategy feel good. You affirm your way into alignment, you journal until your fucking hand develops a cramp and you get that claw right. And here's where I'm going to say something that's going to piss off some people, but I mean, that's what we're here for. Right, you are doing it backwards. Mindset doesn't fix a misaligned strategy and you are not the problem. The problem is that you've been sold a lie that you need to become a different person in order to make the strategy work.
Speaker 1:Now I want to take a little segue very quickly and I want to talk for a minute about the self-help, self-improvement industry, because we need to stop pretending that it is innocent in all of this. This industry has built an empire off of convincing powerful, high-achieving women and all people really but we're talking about women today, that they're broken, that every challenge you face is a mindset issue, that your strategy failed because you didn't journal enough, that your career stalled because you didn't visualize hard enough, that your business didn't take off or didn't grow or didn't make the money that they promised it would make because you weren't embodying success energetically. It's bullshit and, worse, it's profitable bullshit Because the second you start questioning the method, they redirect your attention to yourself. You didn't believe enough, you didn't want it badly enough. You must still be harboring some kind of scarcity wound. Meanwhile, nobody's looking at the fact that the strategy they sold you was never meant for someone with your life and your responsibilities, and your identity and your capacity and your fucking reality. This is how the self-improvement complex keeps you stuck, because it makes your growth the prerequisite for progress. It makes you wait until you're perfect to start. It turns your evolution into a condition instead of a natural byproduct of movement. You want to know why you feel like you're on a hamster wheel, because they're selling you mindset as medicine, when what you actually need is a mirror and a map. Right, you don't need to be fixed. You need a strategy that honors and aligns with the truth of who you are. The most radical thing you can do in this climate isn't to become a better version of yourself. It is to trust the version of you that already exists and build from there. Now don't get it twisted. Don't get your knickers in a twist. Don't get your panties in a bunch.
Speaker 1:I'm not against mindset work. I do think it's important. I think it's very necessary, but I also think it is a lifelong process of growth and expansion and healing. It is not the starting point for execution. It is not the thing that gets you moving, because real mindset shifts they take time. Deep change takes years. You don't become someone else overnight just because you filled a workbook out or you listened to a pep talk on YouTube. And the women I work with they don't have years to waste trying to become someone else in order to make a strategy work. They're ready to move now.
Speaker 1:And to move now you need a strategy that is built for who you are today, not who you hope to become three years from now. That's why identity has to be the starting point. Not vision boarding your future self or scripting your dream life, but getting brutally fucking honest about where you are right now, who you are right now, what you believe, what you value, what you're actually capable of holding, what your capacity is emotionally, mentally, physically, financially. If your current identity and internal culture are telling you a different story than the one your strategy is built on, that strategy is already dead in the water. So what do you do? Instead?
Speaker 1:You design strategy backwards, not from goal to action, but from self to strategy. You start by asking who am I right now, in this season of life? What do I truly believe I can do right now? What do I want? Not what should I want, not what looks good, not what everyone else is chasing, but what do I want right now? What is my actual capacity right now? Not my imagined, aspirational, fully fucking optimized capacity, but what can I realistically hold and execute on and how can I build a strategy that fits this version of me? Because here's what happens when you build a strategy that aligns with your real identity, you actually follow through. You stop doubting every decision you have to make. You don't need motivation or hype, because you're grounded in clarity and you start actually seeing momentum, not because you're trying harder or hustling harder, but because the strategy fits. It fits and here's the kicker as you move forward and your identity starts to shift, as you grow and evolve. Well, guess what? The strategy can grow and evolve with you, but it has to start with who you are now.
Speaker 1:The entire industry has conditioned you to believe you need to work on yourself before you can make a move, that you need to heal everything, align everything, fix everything before you're allowed to take action. That's pretty fucking convenient for people who sell endless mindset programs, but for you, that mindset trap is keeping you stuck. You don't need to be more worthy, you don't need to become a high vibe match. You need to be strategic about the reality of who you are right now and stop expecting strategy to save you from doing the inner work you want. To stop spinning in circles. Start with identity, anchor into what is real and then build from there. That is what powerful self-leadership looks like Now.
Speaker 1:I mentioned something earlier your capacity. That's something we're going to dig into soon, not today, because there are five key capacities that influence whether a strategy is actually going to work for you. But I want you to let today's message sit and marinate. Think about where you've been trying to force a strategy that was never actually designed for you. That was never actually designed for you. Think about where you've blamed yourself when the real issue was actually misalignment, not lack of discipline or lack of belief. And I want you to ask yourself what would change if I built a strategy that actually fits me and if you're ready to start making moves from that place. You know where to find me, but until then, please stop performing success. Stop trying to fit into strategies that weren't made for you. Build your own and then lead like you mean it. All right.
Speaker 1:I want to very quickly mention the giveaway I talked about at the beginning of the episode, and it is a giveaway for a copy of my book Bite Size Blasphemy that is available on Amazon and any other online retailer or any brick and mortar store that has an online component to it. You can buy it from anywhere, but if you would love your own copy, signed, sealed and delivered straight to your door, do me a favor. Head to the show notes and click the little send us a message link and send me a text. Send me a text message with your name and where you're from and your Instagram handle. If you don't have an Instagram handle, then put your email address so that I know how to get in touch with you and what I'm going to do is I am going to draw at the end of the month, on May 31st.
Speaker 1:Going to do is I am going to draw at the end of the month, on May 31st, and I'm going to announce on social media and I'm going to send you a signed copy of my book. So if you're interested in reading Bite-sized Blasphemy, head to the show notes, send us a text and make sure I know who you are, because that's usually helpful. So, social media handle, email who you are, where you're from and thank you very much for listening today. Honestly, let's do this okay, because you deserve the success that you actually want and, like I say every week, you can have success without the BS. Let's fucking go.