I was giving a consultation one time, and the potential client asked me, “What was the hardest part about starting your business?”

My answer? Doing the work.

I already knew what I wanted to build. I knew how I wanted to help people. It was a proven business model. There are always going to be life coaches, and they will always need help building their business. Clients don’t just show up once you get coaching certified; you have to attract them to you.

But, I was having trouble doing the work needed to build my business. It felt like I was doing a lot of things, but I wasn’t seeing results. When I thought about it, I wasn’t even doing the things that I knew needed to be done to get in front of my ideal clients, life coaches.

It came down to me not understanding how to build good habits.

James Clear wrote the definitive guide to creating new good habits and ending bad ones. The foundation of his book, Atomic Habits, is the 4 stages of habit. It turns out we can use this understanding to make our habits what we want them to be so that we can create the best coaching business we are capable of.

Once you understand the 4 stages, you can use them to implement the habits you want to have.

The first stage is the Cue. A cue triggers your brain to start a behavior. It acts as a piece of information predicting a reward.

Our ancient ancestors paid attention to cues that indicated the presence of essential rewards like food, water, and sex. Today, we focus on cues predicting secondary rewards like money, fame, power, status, praise, approval, love, friendship, or a sense of personal satisfaction. These pursuits also indirectly improve our chances of survival and reproduction, which is the fundamental motive behind all our actions. That’s just how our primal brain works.

Your mind is constantly scanning your environment for clues about where rewards might be found. Since the cue is the initial sign that a reward is near, it naturally leads to a craving.

Cravings are the second step in the habit loop and are the driving force behind every habit. Without some level of motivation or desire—without craving a change—we have no reason to act.

You don’t crave the habit itself but the result that it brings. You don’t crave smoking a cigarette; you crave the relief it provides. You’re not motivated by brushing your teeth; you desire the feeling of a clean mouth and no cavities. You don’t want to turn on the television; you want to be entertained. Every craving is linked to a desire to make a change.

The third step is the Response. The response is the actual habit you perform—it’s the action. Well, it can also be a thought.

Whether a response occurs depends on your motivation and the amount of effort required. If an action demands more physical or mental effort than you are willing to exert, you won’t do it.

Finally, the response delivers a Reward. Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The cue is about noticing the reward. The craving is about wanting the reward. The response is about obtaining the reward.

The first purpose of rewards is to satisfy your craving. Rewards also provide benefits on their own.

Food and water give you the energy to survive. A promotion brings more money and respect. Getting in shape improves your health and your dating prospects.

Secondly, rewards teach us which actions are worth remembering in the future. Your brain is a reward detector. The more you experience and enjoy the reward, the more likely you are to do the response or the action again. Rewards close the feedback loop and complete the habit cycle.

If a behavior is lacking in any of the four stages, it will not become a habit. Remove the cue, and the habit won’t start. Reduce the craving, and you won’t have enough motivation to act. Make the behavior difficult, and you won’t be able to do it. If the reward doesn’t satisfy your desire, then you’ll have no reason to do it again in the future. Without the first three steps, a behavior won’t occur. Without all four, a behavior won’t be repeated.

When the reward that you want is to have a thriving coaching business that provides massive income and plenty of opportunities to touch the lives of others, what is the action (called the response in this model) that you need to do?

This model teaches us that we need to provide the right cues to trigger the craving, which leads to the response (or action), which then finally gives us the reward that we crave.

How do you provide the right cues?

With Routine Reinforcers.

That is exactly what I talked about in Ep 009 – 2 Must-Have Productivity Tools Every Life Coach Needs. Go back and listen to how to implement the Calendar vs. To-Do List mini-process, Time Blocking, and the Pomodoro Technique.

Those strategies keep us on track. They keep us from going off track.

They reinforce the routine that we set for ourselves.

Because there are always going to be distractions. There are always going to be other cue-craving-trigger-reward cycles that come up that, if you follow them, will take you farther away from your business goals. They may feel good at the moment, but they are not the actions you planned to take.

Having guardrails is utterly important, and it’s backed up by the scientific observations made in this book, Atomic Habits.

I don’t even have to teach you any of these Routine Reinforcers in order for you to start to see how to use this cycle to your advantage.

Think about any negative habits. When you sit down to work on your business, do you have any repeat distractions? Does checking your email suddenly feel like the most important thing to do? Checking your social feed? Scanning news headlines is a big one for me. Completely unimportant, yet somehow feels incredibly compelling.

What about starting new good habits? When do you plan to do the action? For how long? What’s the first step? You have to have the right cue that triggers the craving so that you actually do the response or the action.

Do you want to know the other part of what it took for me to get my act together and start doing the work of building my business? Accountability.

I owe a large part of me actually creating the podcasts, the emails, the lead magnets, the ads, and so on to my coach. Definitely, the most uncomfortable conversations I’ve had are around the time that I said I was going to do the work, and then I didn’t. I don’t make that mistake anymore. I’ve put all the Routine Reinforcers into place so that I do what I say I’m going to do.

If you’d like help with accountability, email me or set up a free mini session below.