129. Direction vs Pressure: Are VAs and OBMs Building Toward the Wrong Business Goal?

If you are a VA, OBM, or done-for-you service provider who is making progress but something keeps feeling slightly off, this episode is going to name exactly what that is. It is not burnout. It is not a strategy problem. It might be that the goal you are building toward was never actually yours to begin with.

This episode gets into the difference between direction and pressure, why so many capable service providers end up chasing borrowed visions, and three questions to help you figure out which one you are actually in right now.

Key Points Covered:

✨ The difference between direction and pressure (and why they can look identical from the outside)

✨ What a borrowed vision is and how most business owners end up with one without realizing it

✨ Why a better strategy will not fix a goal that was never yours

✨ A client story: she came in wanting an agency and discovered something completely different

✨ Three questions to help you find your own direction right now

✨ Why friction in your business might be a vision problem, not a strategy problem

📩 I read every message, come find me on Instagram: @SoulfulBizCoachAndrea

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Podcast produced and edited with love by @FerAssists

Transcript

[00:00:00] Andrea Elibero: Hello, and welcome to Soulpreneur Scaling Stories. I'm Andrea, a certified OBM turned business coach helping VAs, OBMs, and done-for-you service pros turn their unstructured expertise into a signature method and a business that pays them for outcomes, not hours. So if you want a business that gives you freedom instead of taking it, you're in the right place.

[00:00:23] Andrea Elibero: Okay, so when you picture where your business is headed, the version or, like, what you're building towards, the goal that you keep coming back to, does it feel like something that you authentically want, or does it feel like something that you decided on? Because there is a difference, and that is what we are going to explore today.

[00:00:45] Andrea Elibero: Because there is this kind of tired that shows up a few years into a VA, OBM, done-for-you service provider business, and it's really interesting 'cause I see a lot of people exhibiting this. It's not [00:01:00] necessarily burnout. It's more like a friction. Like, you're moving, you're making progress, and things are technically fine, but something keeps snagging.

[00:01:09] Andrea Elibero: There is something that just feels slightly off about what you're doing, and it can be really frustrating because you can't really explain it. Nothing is really wrong. The clients are there. The income is coming in, and you have goals, right, that you are working towards. But you're not being pulled forward the way that you thought you would be.

[00:01:30] Andrea Elibero: So if you've ever felt this, like, low-grade mismatch between where you're headed and how it actually feels on the way there, this is the episode for you. So a lot of business owners, especially in this space, are working towards a goal that sounds right, it looks successful, and it makes complete sense on paper.

[00:01:54] Andrea Elibero: The problem is that it was not their vision. I'm going to explain what I mean by [00:02:00] I don't mean that they stole something or copied something. It's more like they borrowed this vision. They have great intentions, and they did this from people that they respected.

[00:02:12] Andrea Elibero: So maybe you're somebody who has joined a mastermind or a community, or you've listened to a lot of podcasts, maybe this one. Maybe you have watched people that you have admired describe what their goals are, or you see what they're doing, and at some point, their version of the next level, or you see them as the next level, and this now becomes your next level.

[00:02:36] Andrea Elibero: Like, obviously, that's what you want to do. Of course, that's what growth looks like. So you start building towards it. You have this goal, right? It's okay, and here I go. And I know because I have done this myself. When I was a VA, I was getting to the point where I had too many general clients, and I said, "Okay, what do I do now?"

[00:02:59] Andrea Elibero: [00:03:00] So I did what most people do. I started researching, "Okay, how do I grow a VA business?" And the only thing that was shown to me that came up in my research was to have an agency. I said, "Okay." That was it. That was the path. That's how you grow a VA business, period. Let's go. So that's what I did, right? I assumed that that was the next step.

[00:03:24] Andrea Elibero: And now why did I make this decision? I didn't make this decision because I decided that an agency was my dream. I didn't make this decision I thought about, "Okay, what does the day-to-day of having an agency look like, and is that how I want to spend my days?" No. I made that decision because I was borrowing somebody else's vision of what growth looked like for a VA. And, uh, spoiler alert, the-- I only did that for a few months before then becoming a certified OBM because having an agency and doing general VA work was not [00:04:00] my zone of genius.

[00:04:01] Andrea Elibero: It was not my unique magic. So that is what happens when you follow somebody else's vision. And so what else can this look like? Sometimes it looks like somebody convincing themselves that they need to create a course because that's what scaling looks like. That's impressive. Sometimes it's a VA trying to become an OBM because that's obviously the next step.

[00:04:22] Andrea Elibero: Sometimes it's an OBM trying to become a coach because other people are asking them, "Oh, how did you start your business? I also want to do that." It can also look like an agency model, premium packages, having a team, passive income, niching down to one service, one industry, one t- client type, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:04:41] Andrea Elibero: Now, these are all 100% legitimate paths, and all of them have worked for real people. But before you know what path you're going down, there is a question that you need to ask yourself: Do I want this? Is this the path for me? Not could it [00:05:00] work, not will it make money, not does it work for, you know, these other people, but does this goal fit the person who I am?

[00:05:11] Andrea Elibero: Does it support the way I want to work? Does it support the life that I am building? And it's interesting because if you scroll way back in this podcast, there are just story after story of other done-for-you business owners who have had so- such success in their businesses and, at the same time, they didn't enjoy them.

[00:05:33] Andrea Elibero: They didn't like them. And they got advice from other people that didn't come from them. Then they burned it down, started over, did something else, and that was the thing that was successful. They followed something that was in alignment with them, and they started over because of this exact reason. It was coming...

[00:05:51] Andrea Elibero: The original idea was coming from this borrowed vision So now let me share with you a current client story [00:06:00] because it really illustrates everything. So this client came into Expansion, which is my one-on-one coaching, knowing what she wanted. Said, "I wanna run an agency. I want a team. I want to move out of the execution.

[00:06:11] Andrea Elibero: I want to be strategic." And great. Let's do it. And in one of the first exercises that we do in Expansion, I have my clients do a little self-exploration. I ask them things like, "What energizes you in your work? What drains you? When you have done work that you are so excited that the time flies by without even knowing, what does that look like?"

[00:06:37] Andrea Elibero: And so as she is doing some of these ex- and more questions, but those are the taste of them. So as she was answering these questions and we got to a place where a different type of picture started forming, what fit her, what supported her dream life vision, what supported her unique magic was not this general catch-all agency.[00:07:00] 

[00:07:00] Andrea Elibero: It was something more focused and more specific. It was operations. She loved doing the strategy, and she wanted maybe one person working under her. So it... this was same ambition, but a different architecture that was supporting her, right? So she was still building something, and she was still doing the strategy, but the actual offer that was in alignment with her and her strengths, what she wanted to build, was different than what she thought at the beginning.

[00:07:31] Andrea Elibero: And when she saw that, she told me something that was really cool, and she said, "Oh, this feels like direction, not pressure." And the more I thought about that sentence, the more I realized that it explains what happens when we're building towards a borrowed vision. The borrowed vision is the cause, and the pressure is the symptom, and the direction is the signal that you are moving towards something that is yours, that's authentically yours.

[00:07:58] Andrea Elibero: So because [00:08:00] direction and pressure from the outside, they can look the same, right? With both of them, you grow. With both of them, you're stretching yourself. With both of them, you're doing hard things. But direction, when you have direction, you feel like you're moving towards yourself. But when you have pressure, the movement feels like it's away from your core self, 'cause that is what a borrowed vision does.

[00:08:21] Andrea Elibero: It creates pressure, and you're always half convincing yourself. You keep needing to re-motivate yourself. You keep needing to remind yourself why you wanted this and keep pushing against that resistance that is there and won't quite go away. Now your own vision, it's not effortless, right? You still have difficult days, you still have times when you're questioning yourself, and you still have seasons where the motivation might dip down a little bit more than what you want.

[00:08:50] Andrea Elibero: But the difference is that you're not arguing with the destination. The work might be difficult to get there, but the direction is authentically yours. [00:09:00] And that, there is nothing better than this feeling, and that is motivating in and of itself. And I've had this happen multiple times in my own business.

[00:09:09] Andrea Elibero: There were seasons where I felt like I was chasing a version of growth that looked impressive from the outside, but didn't fit the life I wanted. This life where I got to move to Spain, where I got to work hours that I wanted to, where I wasn't on calls and putting out fires 24/7, what I wanted my days to feel like, and things like that.

[00:09:29] Andrea Elibero: And there was another client as well, as another example, who she was a VA, and she had a client come to her and was like, "Oh, I want you as my OBM." And she was like, "Okay." We talked about it, and she goes, "Okay, let's try it." She did it. She didn't like it at all. And she was surprised by that because she had in her mind, "Oh, this is how you grow."

[00:09:51] Andrea Elibero: But no, that's not how she grow. What we did was we created a core offer that was around her own [00:10:00] unique magic and that was supportive of her dream life vision. And so that is what having direction means versus having pressure. So if pressure is the symptom, then the question becomes, why does this happen in the first place?

[00:10:15] Andrea Elibero: Why do so many smart and capable business owners end up building towards goals that don't actually fit them, that aren't theirs, that don't light them up? And the thing is, is that, listen, like this is not a character flaw, right? It's a really logical thing to do, especially early on in your business.

[00:10:31] Andrea Elibero: Because when you're building something new, you don't always have a reference point for what's possible, so you look around. You look at other people who have built something that you admire, and you use their vision and what they have built as a map for yourself. And that's actually a smart thing to do.

[00:10:48] Andrea Elibero: But the problem is that eventually you outgrow this borrowed vision, and then what do you do? And nobody tells you. Like, like how do you know that that's what it is, right? [00:11:00] So instead of thinking like, "Oh, maybe this isn't mine anymore. Maybe I n- want to do... You know, pivot and shift and do something else," you think, "Why am I struggling with this?

[00:11:09] Andrea Elibero: Why everybody else does this, why doesn't it feel right for me? What's wrong with me?" Absolutely nothing is wrong with you. All you're doing is navigating with somebody else's directions that weren't meant for you. And you know, these communities, these masterminds, these advice that coaches give you when they're just like, "Oh, do this, this, and this," and tell you things to do That's where it comes from.

[00:11:33] Andrea Elibero: It's not bad, but unless it feels authentic to you, it's not going to work. And so there is this moment, then you have to make a decision. Do I follow this, this pressure, or do I go in my direction? And so now let's do... make this a little bit more concrete, and let's find your direction. So let's do a little exercise.

[00:11:56] Andrea Elibero: I have three questions for you. So the first one is, [00:12:00] what is the business goal that you are currently right now building towards? Just a few sentences. What are you chasing right now? And second, where did that goal come from? Who did you learn it from, or who did you see build something similar that made you think, "Ooh, yes, that's what I want"?

[00:12:17] Andrea Elibero: And be honest here because it's going to give you some really good information. And third, if you set aside that version of your business completely, if there were no obvious next steps, there were no industry norms, you can't compare yourself to anybody, what would you want your business to look like?

[00:12:37] Andrea Elibero: What would it feel like to run? And what would your day-to-day look like? What kind of work would you do, and for whom?

[00:12:49] Andrea Elibero: Now, you don't have to have the answers to the third question, but... Right now anyways. But notice how it feels to sit with that and to think about it, and notice what does [00:13:00] come up for you and if it surprises you. And that is really good information to have you start thinking about your own direction And so now let's talk about why this matters beyond the emotional side to it, because a borrowed vision doesn't just create pressure, it creates confusion strategically.

[00:13:19] Andrea Elibero: Most people think that friction means that they need a better strategy, but strategy amplifies whatever goal that it is attached to. So if the destination is off, then a better strategy just gets you to this off destination faster. So inside of expansion, the first thing that we do before we touch any offers or any marketing, before we touch any of the tactical things, is to get underneath the hood of your business and you, and to figure out what you want to build, what is authentically yours.

[00:13:48] Andrea Elibero: Like I said, I keep using these terms because they're so important. What is your unique magic? What is your dream life vision? We build a business that supports you from there. Because the strategy is only as good [00:14:00] as the foundation that it is sitting on. So if you have been feeling this friction lately, don't just assume that there's something to do with your discipline or the strategy.

[00:14:08] Andrea Elibero: Ask yourself also about the vision. Maybe it's a vision problem. Ask yourself if the pressure you're feeling is maybe that's giving you some information. Maybe it's pointing towards a goal that needs to be refined or adjusted or reimagined. Because, you know, like you might not just be lost, you might be building towards the wrong goal.

[00:14:29] Andrea Elibero: And the foundation has to start with you and what is internally within you. So if you are listening to this episode and you've recognized that friction or if the exercise surfaced something interesting, I would love to invite you to a free business audit call. It is forty-five minutes. It is free. And we look at what is happening inside your business right now and we untangle where things feel off.

[00:14:54] Andrea Elibero: Now, this is not like five minutes of business audit and like forty minutes of a [00:15:00] sales call. We spend the ninety-five percent of the time looking at your business structure, your goals, where the gaps are, and how we can get you there. ' Cause a lot of people come in thinking they have a strategy problem, and then they realize that it was a clarity problem.

[00:15:14] Andrea Elibero: And knowing what the actual problem is changes what you do next. So I am so excited to see you in a business audit. It is linked in the show notes. It is dancingleafsolutions.com/business-audit. And so of course, if during that conversation it makes sense to talk about what I do, we will. But before anything else, we are going to spend forty minutes talking about you and figuring out what is going on, because you do not need a better borrowed map.

[00:15:41] Andrea Elibero: You need to start drawing your own. And so that is all that I have for you today on this episode, and I will see you in the next 

[00:15:48] Andrea Elibero: one. 

[00:15:49] Andrea Elibero: That's a wrap on today's episode, and thank you so much for listening. If anything we talked about today made you think, "Okay, but what does this actually look like in my [00:16:00] business?" That's exactly what a free business audit is for. In just 45 minutes, I'll help you identify your unstructured expertise, pinpoint what's keeping you capped, and map out what your signature method could look like.

[00:16:12] Andrea Elibero: There's a link in the show notes to grab your spot, and I will see you in the next episode.