A few months into coaching I started to notice an undeniable pattern emerge.
Some clients were growing incrementally and fighting for every inch they got. Others were growing exponentially on every level.
People in the Incremental Group were hopped up on adrenaline and fear and constantly behind the 8 ball. Their stress and scarcity were being transmitted to the rest of the organization throttling team motivation, coherence, and flow and creating a burnout culture that added even more pressure. Occasionally there would be a breakthrough, but it was often followed by valleys or doldrums. These founders were sacrificing their health, relationships, and best years of their lives in the hopes of a big payday that would make it all worth it.
Simultaneously people in the Exponential Group were experiencing quantum leaps in their businesses alongside growth in their relationships, health, vitality, and fulfillment.
Here are some of the things I saw my clients in the Exponential Group achieve:
Not only did my clients create something in the material world, but they also got to grow and expand in ways they never thought possible. As crazy as it might sound, the founder with the $44M exit will tell you that his financial abundance feels like a bonus compared with who he got to become in the process.
These outcomes flew in the face of the classic entrepreneurial mentality that insists founders must grind themselves down to achieve success. And as you might imagine, the difference between the outcomes in the Incremental Group and the Exponential Group piqued my curiosity. Could there be a decisive trait that linked the members of each group? Could these success stories be replicable?
The more I delved into the laboratory of my life and the lives of my clients, the more the dots began to connect…
I began to see that the entrepreneurs in the Incremental Group put strategy and a desire to achieve their goals above internal alignment, while those in the Exponential Group prioritized their alignment above all else.
I define alignment as a match between your Inner Compass and your words and actions.
Your Inner Compass is an innate guidance system that’s governed by your deepest values and instincts and transmits an embodied sense of what’s right, not right, and authentic for you at any given moment.
Steve Jobs, had his own way of speaking about matching your Inner Compass with your words and actions: “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow know what you truly want to become.”
While the Inner Compass is an incredible apparatus very few people align their behavior with it. I’ve identified two main reasons why: