Hustle VS Alignment: Introduction to The Universe Has Your Business

To coaches, teachers, marketers, dreamers and entrepreneurs on the rise. You're here to create your dream business and life and you're ready to let the universe manage the details. How's it done? My name is Andrew Donovan and this is episode one of the Universe has yous Business. There's a lot of conflicting advice out there that can make a well intending entrepreneur feel like they're pulled in a lot of directions when it comes to how to align with the success and the growth that you desire. So many coaches say that the secret to your next breakthrough is to push harder, to overcome more, to address childhood wounds, to shift all your energy to smash your limiting beliefs. Or they say, build smarter funnels, get better leads, hire more help and take faster, bolder, bigger, more intense action. But if you're an entrepreneur who follows a spiritual practice, you're likely also being told that you should be more like a flowing river to let go and to let God, to trust that the universe has your back and to let the law of Attraction do the heavy lifting. So how do these age old pearls of wisdom blend with the ever evolving landscape of digital entrepreneurship? The Especially when a lot of people achieving the results you want, like money or influence or options or freedom, a lot of those coaches are preaching things contrary to spiritual wisdom traditions. So thank you for joining me in this monumental first episode of this brand new podcast, the Universe has yous Business. I'm your host Andrew Donovan and I want to share with you my journey of building my own six and seven figure online companies, my journey of coaching and creating systems for other multimillion and billion dollar companies, and most importantly, my journey of going from hustle and efforting to literally allowing the universe to handle the details of my success. So just so that you have an idea of what to expect in the upcoming episodes of this podcast, we'll cover lots of practical, tactical things that you can implement. We'll talk about digital marketing strategies, tech setup, offer creation, lead generation, where to find traffic, how to find ideal perfect customers on the Internet, work, life, balance, hiring and building your team. I'll also show you examples from how I have actually built my own companies. I'll talk about how I built my online coaching company to six figures the first year that we were in business. And I'll pull back the curtains and show you behind the scenes of how I built an education company. My own education company. Up to seven figures in under three years with minimal staffing with no outside investment. I'll give you lots of cool case studies. We'll have Amazing guest speakers, other high caliber, impressive, successful entrepreneurs and coaches and mentors. But most importantly, in this podcast, we'll talk about how to align with the wiser mind of the universe, which is really where your success is going to come from. So on the outside, my success, it totally looks like hustle. People say to me all the time, they say, wow, you work a lot. And I always laugh. My spouse, we always laugh together because, well, I don't think that I work that much. I enjoy hard work. I am an achiever at heart. In fact, if you're familiar with the Gallup Strengths Finder assessment, my number one strength is achiever. So I'm totally down to grind. I'm totally down. Not like dirty dance and grind. I mean, I like that too, but I'm totally down to hustle and to do what looks like hard work. But I'm gonna tell you right now, my success, it was not from hustle. It was because of the moments when I was in alignment. So let me give you a little bit of backstory. People ask me sometimes why I got into entrepreneurship, and you can skip this part of the podcast episode if it's not interesting to you. But for me, I always like hearing people's stories of growth, where they started, some obstacles they overcame, and especially I'm interested in and how people got the momentum that's moving them forward. So I started entrepreneurship way back in my days of door to door sales. I spent seven years doing door to door, yes, alarm system sales, and my last year was selling solar systems. Every summer between college semesters, I would go out to some new area in the United States, I would knock doors and I would sell people alarm systems. And I call this the early seeds of entrepreneurship, because, I mean, it was technically still a job, but I was mostly on my own for the bulk of the summer. And geez, I'm gonna tell you right now, if you can sell door to door alarm systems, you can do freaking anything. I would be in sweltering climates like in North Carolina and Georgia, where it's. I mean, it's so hot, it was so humid. I would have switched sweat dripping down my arms onto the front porch of these people whose doors I was knocking. And somehow I would get them to let me into their homes to talk about alarm systems. It was miraculous that it actually worked. But after I had had my fair share of door to door sales, I was presented with an opportunity to join a network marketing company. And this was not my first exposure to network marketing. I actually had some kind of strong Opinions about network marketing. I said no to most people and. And then this opportunity just happened to be a really ideal match to my health and wellness lifestyle that I was already living consciously, intentionally. And so I jumped into network marketing and I spent several years trying to achieve my dream rank. And in the midst of that, I discovered a knack for business strategy that I didn't know was there. Some people that were high up in this company, they spotted my strategic abilities and they pulled me into this little group of six people, including me. And we ended up writing the business duplication model for this multi billion dollar company. We were just doing it for our own teams and for friends teams at the time. But then it ended up getting acquired by this multi billion dollar company. And my job in this group was to take complex business systems and break them into a million pieces and then piece it back together in a way that was cohes, in a way that anybody could pick up, take step one and then move right along the process. And so the organization and the strategy, that's really where I brought a lot of value to this team. And that was one of the coolest experiences of my life. It's really what set me up for a lot of the stuff that I do today as a marketing and strategy coach. So when people ask me why got into entrepreneurship, the clearest answer that I think I can find is that I really wanted to feel like I was creating my own destiny. And I'm sure that you can relate to that because that's why most of us become entrepreneurs. We think that we're not, we know that we're not built for a desk job. We're not designed to be managed by somebody else. We're not designed for a 9 to 5. And for me, I wanted that time freedom and I thought I wanted the money. But later on I discovered that what I really wanted was the options that money presents. So options for me is very closely related again to that magical word, freedom. That's what was so intoxicating to me. A lot of what drove me early on in my entrepreneurship was caring a lot about what other people thought of me. I wanted to make a name for myself. I wanted to hit high ranks in that network marketing company or hit impressive sales landmarks in the door to door sales company. And a lot of it was in many ways to prove my worth to other people. And I'll talk more about that in future episodes because that is one of the biggest things that holds a lot of entrepreneurs back. We spend so much of our focus lasered in on what other people think about us, other people's opinions giving meaning and value to the outside world instead of coming from a space of inner focus, inner guidance, inner alignment. So I'll talk more about that in future episodes. But in this podcast, I'm totally going to spend a lot of time intentionally challenging the status quo. And in this episode, I'm particularly going to start by challenging the principle of Hustle. And I mentioned a moment ago that when people look at me and my life right now, they say, oh my gosh, you work so hard. Or people will message me and they say, I know you're really, really busy. And I mean, I always find that amusing because it's such a relative thing, like hard work, that's relative. Being busy, that's relative too, right? And I would like I mentioned I would not equate my success to hustle or hard work. And I definitely would not equate my success to being busy. And to be honest, I don't even see myself as a super successful person. I measure my success by how much joy I experience in life and how I enjoy the freedoms that I've been able to create. And of course, as a business person, I'm very much interested in high converting sales funnels. I love when we scoop up tons of leads for little to no money. I love creative marketing strategies. I do. I really love creative marketing strategies. And I'm excited to talk to you in future episodes about some of the marketing strategies that we've done to build our lists and scoop up tens of thousands of leads and high qualified leads for little to no money or even at a profit. But what I really care about in this first episode is talking about the difference between Hustle and Alignment. Because all those things that I just mentioned that I'm sure you're excited about, because we all know that those are necessary components to a thriving business. But for me, those things all worked. And they worked most seamlessly, most profitably and most enjoyably when I was in a space of alignment. And so let me just quickly define that word because I'm going to use it all the time. So when I say alignment, here's what I mean. I believe that you and I have a higher self at the core of our existence. There's an infinite eternal part of us that I would say is the whole universe. And I'm gonna get a little metaphysical, a little bit esoteric with you here. And that's kind of, that's kind of my brand talking digital strategies plus esoteric talk. And I'm Great with that. So I hope you are, too. But I believe that we have this eternal, infinite part of us that is not just related to or connected to the whole universe, but is the whole universe. And. And we have so many different words for that. Some of us call it our soul, our higher self, our inner being. Some of us call it our. There's all these different words for it. And to me, it's all the same thing. It's. If you were to take your focus from the outside and put it deep and quietly and patiently and calmly within that feeling that you connect to, that energy that's there, that's what I'm talking about. And most of us spend most of our time focusing on outside things. In fact, later in the podcast, there will be three episodes about conditional living. And it's all about where we put our focus on everything outside of us instead of focusing on inner inspiration, inner guidance. When I say the word alignment, I mean that you are consciously focused. You are consciously aligned with. With that deep, eternal, most wisdomless inner part of you. And the reason why this is so precious to me is because I spent a lot of my life thinking that my higher power was an outside force far away from me. So I spent most of my life believing that God was somebody who lived very far away from me physically, and that I had to prove myself worthy and I had to do things to be able to be connected to Him. And. And it took me a long time to realize that that sense of separation, that lack of alignment, was just a story that I'd bought into, and that the most precious thing that I could do would be to find that infinite love and that infinite wisdom from within me. Okay, so at this point, you might be thinking, what the fuck does this have to do with growing my business? Well, let me tell you, my friend, the whole reason why the conversation of alignment is so relevant to business growth is because at your core, you are the universe. And the universe, I mean within it, every answer that you're ever looking for, it already exists. Every potential already exists. Every possibility for you already exists. So at the beginning of this quarter, or this month, or maybe even this year, you probably sat down and I bet that you defined some goals, or maybe you just dreamed them up, you didn't write them down. But I'm sure that you have specific things that you want to achieve, like maybe some financial landmarks, maybe you want to hire some new employees. Maybe you just want to get your first podcast episode recorded. Maybe you want to make your first sale as an entrepreneur, as A coach, as a marketer, whatever you are, and whatever those goals are that you have in mind to the greater sum of the universe, they're already actualized, they already exist. You're just trying to figure out, how do I get those to appear in my physical reality? Because I kind of would like the money in my account, or I would like the people on my email list, or I'd like the pool of customers that are like, raving about my brand and my business. And my methodology. And alignment really is the ultimate key to that. So I like to say at this moment, you are at point A in your business, in your life, and then you've got a bunch of things you'd like to improve in order to get to point B, right? Well, at a soul level, your. I like to call it your soul self, and I mentioned inner being, higher self, all of that. I like to say soul self. It's like whole self, but at a soul level, right? And it is your whole self. At a soul self level, you already are able to navigate the perfect path of least resistance to get to where you want to go. And when you're in an aligned state, that's where you're susceptible to the most inspired thoughts, to those impressions, those impulses that are going to take you most efficiently to where you want to go. And that's why I say my success is not due to hustle. My success is in spite of my hustle, if anything. And I've had many moments where I was trying to hustle, where I would try to grind and I would take action in place of alignment. But all the moments when I was actually aligned, when I was in a space of inspiration, of insight, that's when the best ideas came. That's when my actions produced the most fruitful results. That's when I would rendezvous with the perfect person, the perfect relationship, the perfect opportunity, and so many. I mean, if we were to make a timeline of how I grew my coaching business or how I grew my education company, there would be so many details on that timeline. I mean, hundreds of thousands of things that came into place. And most of those things are things that I wouldn't be able to orchestrate. And that's almost why I think it's a little bit of a flawed premise when we say it's time as an entrepreneur for you to take control of your life, to take control of your destiny. Because it's like when you're trying to be in control, that's usually when you fuck up the most and you can't Ever really fuck it up, you're never gonna get it wrong, because the worst thing that happens is you'll learn. But when you're trying to be in control of your own destiny, just listen to that word, control. How does it feel? It's like it's intense. It's not positive. It's not inspired by any means. Right? Inspiration feels like flow. It feels like wonder. It feels like enlightenment. It feels like we might say the word miraculous. And that's where I want to be more of the time, in the ways that I create my businesses and the ways that I create my life. And I'd invite you to consider, after this episode ends, the difference between hustle and alignment. And so people say to me again that I look like I hustle a lot. And. And they're probably observing those moments when I'm in a flurry of action. That's inspired action, because I spend a lot of time every day finding my alignment, tuning into that inner stillness, that inner inspiration. And then when I've got an impulse, I've got an idea, and I'm excited about it, and I can feel that it's inspired thought. Well, I've got to get my ass off the couch, and I've got to get to the office. I've got to get on the phone with the right person on my team. And in that moment, you might say, oh, he's hustling. But really, it's. I'm joyfully. I'm enjoying aligned, inspired action. And if you want to call that hustle, fine. But most of the people who use the term hustle, I found, it's that they are pushing against. It's that they're trying to overcome or coerce or be in control. And that's what their version of hustle is. And that's not my version of hustle. I don't do that. And if you catch me doing that, you won't catch me doing it for very long, because I catch myself now, and I go find my alignment again, friend. That is the base premise of the universe. Has your business. Not only do I believe that the wiser mind of the universe always is working in your favor. Not only am I certain that well being abounds for you, that well being is constantly flowing, constantly available. You are not here to prove yourself worthy of well being. You're not here to prove yourself worthy of money. You're not here to prove yourself worthy of the trust of the followers that you have or the followers you want to gain of your customers. You're not here to prove yourself at all. If anything, you're here to just enjoy, to be in flow, to be in love of life, love of creation. That's why being an entrepreneur is so fun and so rich and rewarding. And throughout the rest of this podcast, the way that I'm going to use this platform with you is sometimes there will totally be practical and tactical strategies and exercises that you can implement to systematize, to improve your results, to do specific actual action oriented things in your business. I mean, I am all about the achievement, I'm all about the action, I'm all about the strategy. And sometimes an episode will just be a conversation and intended to help you wiggle your way into a flow of inspiration and alignment, which is really where all of your true success and the best results will come from. Anyway, so my friend, I want to say thank you again for joining me in this first episode of the Universe has yous Business. Truly, I know that is a reality that the universe has your business. This is not a question of do you have what it takes to succeed. I mean, you're an infinite cosmic creator. If you're not sure if you have what it takes or if you think you've got obstacles or blocks things that are keeping you from success, old childhood wounds, limiting past beliefs, bad habits, whatever I'm going to tell you right now, your success is inevitable. You're not going to. You can't fuck it up, you can't get it wrong. The worst thing that will happen ever is that you'll learn. But in our time together, I hope that you'll find a space to enjoy the sensation of being in inspired action more of the time. And as you learn to settle into a space of your own alignment, your own inspiration, you'll find the success coming to you. You won't find yourself chasing success anymore. You won't find yourself in the field, in the trenches, in the mud, trying to make things happen. You'll find yourself cheerfully and effortlessly rendezvousing with ideal conditions, with ideal opportunities, ideal inspired thought, ideal inspired action. And that's when you'll wake up one morning and you'll say, oh, you know what? I guess the universe had my business the whole time. I guess the universe had my success, had my joy, had my whatever you want. Okay, so we're gonna wrap it up right now. Thanks again. Do me a favor, if you haven't already subscribed, hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss another episode. In the next episode, we'll be talking about something business specific I'm going to share with you a strategy, a process that I've used to clarify niches for my brands. And if you don't have a niche yet, if you don't know what your niche is, or if you think you have like 10 niches, this is going to be a great episode for you because you would gain invaluable clarity to take you forward in your business and your brand. So thanks again for being here. Hit that subscribe button, share it with friends and colleagues that you know need this message, and I'll see you in the next episode.