Changing The Story With Lana Dingwall

What does using your intuition as a business strategy even mean?  Intuition means paying attention to the things that feel good in our hearts and belly. It’s being able to distinguish this from the thoughts in your mind (your ego). It’s about trusting that we are capable of what we desire, that we can let go of the expectations and shoulds.  Cultivating a deeper connection with your intuition can seem abstract, so here are some ways to make it more tangible.  One way is building self-trust starts with pausing your search for answers from others. Sitting in silence and learning to trust your inner feelings. Ask yourself what feels right or makes sense for you before you ask others. Starting small builds this muscle to help us later on when we need our intuition for bigger decisions and pivots in our business. We can have this false assumption that we are broken and so we are constantly searching for the answers outside of us.  It’s important to look for support and community where we feel supported in empoweri

The world as it is today can feel intense. There are so many expectations, responsibilities, and work to be done. It can feel very overwhelming. You might be thinking….   I want to grow and expand my business, make more money, and create more stability in my life.  But I also want to address the needs of my community and the injustices in the world, while also finding time for the healing and space that I need. How do I support and show up for others when I also feel ungrounded in these turbulent times and deeply in need of support too? Where do I start? How do I start? How do I find time to do everything, to be everything?   The simple answer is that you don’t have to do it alone. Part of our overwhelm comes from this idea that we have to do, and be, everything. But what if it was actually about coming together and being those things as a collective?  We are being called to step up.  Step up for ourselves, for those we care for, for our communities, and for people we will never meet.  I want to create a spac

The only way to become the person you’re excited and confident about is to embrace the person that you are today, at whatever stage of the journey you’re in.  We all go through our own journey and oftentimes, what helps us push through, is the community we surround ourselves with. Instead of looking at others as perfect or having everything together, it’s important to realize that we are all exactly where we need to be today on our journey towards our potential. It’s why I’m so passionate about building a community for those of us with service-based businesses who are giving, giving, giving… doing, doing, doing… but also need to stop and fill up our own cups. I’m hosting a free fireside chat this upcoming Wednesday where we will be diving into YOU, so that you can be supported personally and in your business with whatever it is you’re creating. Come as you are and where you are today. It’s exactly where you need to be. How this relates to this week’s episode is that often, we feel flawed because while we are

When we put our sense of accomplishment in milestones, we create a carrot and stick trap for ourselves. We’ve all been there - telling ourselves that when we reach 10k months we’ll feel successful. And then, when we reach it, our new carrot becomes a 20k month. We put so much weight into these milestones when in reality, we are the source of our own power. It’s the act of showing up, not the outcome, that gives us our power. It’s important for us to acknowledge that the thing we are actually seeking is never in the accomplishment, but in who we become in the process of acquiring it. No one can ever take that away from us - the hard work we put in, the inner battles we’ve overcome, or the relationships we made. Remember, who you become is more valuable than the thing itself. When we’re able to ground ourselves in gratitude and appreciation for the work we did to get to our goals, that’s when we can ride all the waves of running a business.   On the episode, I cover: A practice that will ground you in your pow

The world didn’t give you your power or strength, and therefore the world can’t take it away. So many of us forget that all the amazing things about ourselves come from inside of us. Our power and beauty and strength inherently exists within us, regardless of what is going on around us. Forgetting this leads us to believe that the world can take it all away. The biggest trap many entrepreneurs fall into is assigning our worth to our success.  This is where the topic of rejection comes in. We all have our own version of rejection… people not signing up to our programs, not buying our product, a collaboration not happening. It creates a feeling of powerlessness within us, like we are not in control of our own lives. Even worse, it can make us question our value, worth and power.  Remember, no one can take your power away unless you let them. Failure can’t take away your power unless you let it.   On the episode, I cover: How to handle rejection and use concern handling to turn it around Cutting the cord that c

To find our ideal client, we need to look beyond demographics. These are just descriptors of a persona, checkboxes that give us a very limited view and understanding of who we’re looking to attract. Because we all know, we are more than the boxes we get placed into by society. We are more complex than that - with hopes and dreams, fears, ideas and desires that extend beyond our ‘demographic’.  For those of us who offer more in-depth services, like coaching or healing based work, we need to also go in-depth on who our ideal client is. The best way I’ve found to do this is answering three specific questions:   What is your ideal client moving away from? What is your ideal client moving towards? What is your ideal client trying to avoid?   In this week’s episode, I take you through my process of answering these questions and why they are so important. Remember, marketing at its core is about human connection. We all want to be seen, not sold to.   On this week’s episode, I cover: The three types of people: opti

The concept of “unbecoming” is a powerful one and something I speak about often. Unbecoming who we think we’re supposed to be and becoming who we truly are.  Obviously easier said than done, but something I think we all should consider as a serious business (and life) tactic.  Today, I want to take this philosophical discussion and ground it into the real world. To look at how unbecoming allows us to show up better in our marketing and selling. If you are routinely struggling with marketing and selling yourself, the reason is most likely variations of your own insecurities. Fear of being seen, fear of feeling judged, fear of failing, to name a few.  If we were able to get rid of this (or learn to move past it), we would not have any real resistance to selling or marketing.  Realistically we say we ‘don’t get marketing’ but really it isn’t that hard. What’s hard, is actually putting ourselves out there.  Think of how easy it is to suggest your favourite tv show to a friend? You are passionately marketing and s

Sometimes we can get stuck in the cycle of constantly “doing” without leaving any space for reflection. Making space between the moment that you have a new idea and taking action on is what will allow you to build a business that is authentic. Think about how often you ask yourself… If what you’re doing makes sense? If you’re building towards your dream life and business? If what you’re doing is authentic to you and not influenced by your peers? In entrepreneurship, it’s easy to get into a reactive mode. We see what others are doing and we jump onto the bandwagon. Or we hear a new marketing tip and we implement it right away. I often talk about the “shiny object” syndrome with my clients who feel pulled towards someone else’s version of success. When you find yourself reacting instead of responding, take some time to add more reflection instead of constant doing into your life. Remind yourself that you’re on your own journey and try to appreciate someone else’s work without shaming yourself if that’s not wher

When I first launched my own coaching business, I left very little space for my authentic self. Why?  Because I didn’t think that who I was, was good enough.  I wore my glasses more often because I thought I had to look older and smarter. I wore dresses and presented more feminine because I thought business coaches who were women had to look a certain way in order to be accepted. I would be more serious and less playful, all business and less spiritual.  This all stemmed from me feeling that who I was wasn’t good enough, and therefore I needed to be someone else. Some projected idea of what I thought success looked like.  This might resonate with you because this is how you feel too. I sometimes still catch myself feeling this way. Being a calculated version of who you think you need to be will never allow you to feel whole. Feeling unworthy is a black hole that no amount of accomplishments or success will ever fill. Learning to show up as the magnificent human you are, though, will help.  Ask yourself: How c

To build a successful business, there is sometimes this pressure to show up as one dimensional and to portray only a single side of us. There is so much emphasis on succeeding, that it’s also very easy for us to forget that we aren't one dimensional and perhaps have dreams outside of just ‘this’ business.  As a type 7 visionary, the biggest resistance I have in my business is to create complex structures that would take away from my freedom to explore other parts of myself, by requiring me to be ‘in’ my coaching business all the time. If I had a super rigid business structure, I wouldn’t be able to follow my real estate passion, or goal to be a serial entrepreneur. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen that over the past few weeks I’ve been renovating my newest investment property, and soon you’ll see something else popping up.  At our roots, we are all multi-faceted, contradictory, and ever-evolving humans. We don’t have to commit to only one thing for the rest of our life. In my case, I don’t only run

We have been told largely that our sense of safety and security comes down to what we earn and how stable that income is. We think that the more money we make, the more control we will have over the quality of our lives. This though in a lot of ways, is a fallacy. Security is not tied to how much money we make, if anything it’s tied to how we handle our money. Even then though that can only give us so much. This is an important distinction to make because often, in our pursuit of more money, we actually give up important parts of ourselves with the notion that once our pile of money grows bigger so will our sense of safety.  We convince ourselves that this trade-off will be worth it, even though it isn’t. Covid has shown us that even the most seemingly “secure” jobs and industries have been rocked. It has allowed us to see that safety and security are never guaranteed, regardless of what work we choose to do. There is power in knowing this.  Ultimately the only thing you truly need to feel safe and secure is

We’ve often heard the phrase, ‘what advice would you give your younger self?’. I like posing the question from another perspective.  What advice would your childhood self give you?  There’s a lot of power in who we were before we started changing ourselves in order to belong. What would your childhood self say to the current day you? Would they be proud and excited? Would they find it interesting what you do for fun and play? Would they recognize themselves in you? Children are brutally honest, so listen to what your childhood self would say. Tap into these questions and see what you can uncover. A lot of who we are is who we’ve always been. Ask yourself: what was your essence as a child? One thing I admire about childhood Lana is that when you crossed a boundary of hers, she stood up for herself with confidence. She knew what was right and wrong (for her) and she would express that to you instead of trying to be polite and pretending it didn’t bother her.  As an adult, this is the area I struggle with the mo

We talk a lot about leaning into community over competition. But how do you actually build a thriving community and collaborate with like-minded people? For paid groups, it’s important to look at both the content and context. By context I mean who is running it? Will they attract like-minded people that you also resonate with? Or do you only resonate with their content, and in that case maybe should only commit to an online course? For other types of community, these can often come from events you’ve attended (talks, workshops, retreats etc), connecting with people online, reaching out and networking and finding ways to evolve and create community together.  Building community is fundamental to our business. It fuels our continuous growth through an exchange of energy, support, ideas, hopes, strategies, validation, and so much more. On this week’s episode, I cover: The process of finding your people How to grow your influence through social media How coaches can bring you into their community   Remember tha

We are still in a global pandemic, protests are going on around the world and it also happens to be the middle of summer right now. This can lead all of us to feel like we are all in a place where maybe your priority isn’t fully on our work.  September is around the corner, which is often a time of new energy and beginnings. Like clockwork, it’s a time where for a lot of us, our guilt creeps in for not having done “enough” during the summer. It’s what I like to call a season of contraction. If we remember that expansion always follows our times of contraction, then we can be kinder to ourselves through the phases of feeling as if we’re not doing enough. We are humans, not machines, and that means we cycle through seasons and rhythms. Summer is often a season where we feel like doing less, and that is perfectly okay.  We all go through different cycles and the better you can befriend and understand yours, the easier it is to support yourself.  When we feel like we’re in a contraction, when we feel like we have

“If you’re feeling stuck, you’re being called to do something different. To change your point of view. Creativity happens when we put together two things that don’t belong. When we do the unexpected”. I want to talk about business structure today. I’ve gotten trapped time and time again trying to build my purposeful business by approaching it from traditional business structures. Often, we try to build our ethical empire using someone else’s strategy. When we look at business structure, it’s often built around capitalistic values of scalability, profitability, and how we can make the most money even if it kills us. When we look at structure, we need to create a container and structure that makes sense for who we are, what we’re trying to build and the kind of impact we want to have.  Not everything has to be super scalable. Many clients think: if they can’t scale an idea, they won’t even start it. If they can’t quadruple their income, then it’s not a good business idea. This type of thinking can be a trap. In

When we try to conform, we end up losing the best parts of who we are. If we give ourselves permission to be weird, to be different, to be eccentric in whatever ways feel good for us, we'll find our authentic self. So much of figuring out who you are, has to do with forgetting who you feel you’ve needed to be in order to ‘fit in’.  Working with, talking about, and believing in energy can be considered ‘woo’ but in this community I like to think we know that there is so much possibility out there, why not believe in and utilize energy?  Energy work is like software. It’s intangible and always present. You can create software from an idea, and build it online, without needing to go to the store and buying physical supplies to do so. Energy is the same. You can imagine and create things.  With energy work, you are not chasing a goal or label. You are purely remembering all that you’re capable of, and uncovering and strengthening your superpowers. Jeffrey Allan, a world renowned energy worker and healer (maybe yo

The self help / personal development industry is huge right now. Especially in the entrepreneurial world (*cough* I am in it *cough*). This industry can be either problematic or beautiful. It just depends on which lens you are using to look at your growth and development. One lens is that you are a problem to be fixed, and the other is that you are inherently good just as you are, but are holding space to be better. It can be problematic when the narratives we create do more harm than good. When we’re told that we are a problem that needs to be fixed, we end up focusing on what we feel makes us broken, incomplete, undeserving, and unworthy. We forget that we are human beings, not machines, which means we are never broken. We don’t need to be fixed, nor can we ever achieve ‘perfection’ when we are all so beautifully different and complex. We weren’t ‘built’ to be perfect and that’s where self help can sometimes be problematic: when it treats us as if we are broken and that if we were just tinkered with enough,

“If you don’t bring forth what is within you, it will destroy you” People are afraid to go inward and discover their genius, because they won’t know what they will do with it. Our zone of genius is such a big part of us, which is why it feels so scary and intimate to release it out to the world. But many of us end up doing only 10% of what we love doing, and the rest is work that drains us.  What if you could tailor your work to do 90% of what you love? Imagine the amount of energy that would radiate off of you and onto those around you, if you were able to spend the majority of your time doing work that truly makes you come alive and lights you up? This isn’t just some distant dream or naive thought, this is genuinely possible for you and others.  We spend so much of our bandwidth trying to avoid being vulnerable, it ironically becomes the very thing that makes us vulnerable. We desire financial freedom, but give up our freedom to make money. We want to create a name for ourselves so that we are important, b

How do you explain what it is that you do, when you feel parts of your work and the transformation you offer people are almost unexplainable?  Marketing is simply a form of communication. When trying to explain an experience, we need to think outside of just website copy, email copy, and social media copy. This alone won't open their eyes to the experience of what it’s truly like working with you, or using your product.  We’ve all heard the saying ‘it doesn’t matter what you say, it just matters how you make them feel’, well that applies to marketing too.  How can you make people feel what it’s like to work with you, when you know that words won’t do it justice? The best way to market your product or service: experience-based marketing. There are certain aspects of your way of doing business that can’t be explained. It’s a lived experience. Something that can only be understood to the full depth of it’s awesomeness through interaction.  You can do this, without them having to work with you or buy your product

When you hear the phrase ‘work ethic’, what do you think?  For many reasons, Jason and I both strongly dislike it. Here's why.  When we take things too seriously, we lower our creativity.  When we try to control things (*cough* unhealthy obsession with productivity *cough*) we kill creativity and spontaneity.  Work ethic insinuates that there is some type of moral compass associated with working.  You’re either right (work hard and grind) or you’re wrong (lazy). If you have a good work ethic you’re a good person, a valuable person, someone of merit, but that type of thinking is problematic and it traps us.  Why are we putting so much pressure on work?  What about joy? Play? Rest? Relaxation?  We need to loosen the tight grip on everything we think we’re ‘supposed to be doing’ and let work be fun. What’s the point of everything you’re doing if we can’t have joy? How do you give up work ethic? How can we shift our reality? My guest this week is Jason Goldberg. As an ‘activator of joy’, his online business plan