Case Study
Rachel has been running her fitness coaching business for 7 years, doing pretty well.
I had a call with her in September where she shared that everything had gone quiet.
Classes weren't full, leads weren’t coming, and ad prices were going up.
Rachel's brain went into full panic mode. "This is it. This is the end. I’m gonna have to shut down the business.”

She'd wake up at 3 am thinking about those empty spots in her schedule. One long-time client didn't renew, and her immediate thought was: "Everyone's leaving. I'm losing them all."

She started making decisions from that fear.
Should she lower her prices?
Completely redo her programming?
Hire someone else?
Maybe it did make sense to close it down.

She wasn't sleeping. Wasn't eating right. Snapping at people for no reason. The panic was constant as it felt like everything she'd built was crumbling.

But here's the thing that's wild -  this wasn't new to Rachel.
This exact same pattern showed up every single year. Autumn was always a quieter season. And every time she’d feel like shutting the business down.

On that first call, Rachel shared she spirals in other areas of life, too.
Whenever her husband gets really busy at work and stays in the office late. Her mind goes places that she knows aren’t true.

Her brain knew it was a pattern, but didn’t *know*. It got so caught up in the emotions and far-flung possibilities that she struggled to think logically.

It's a Thinking Skill
It wasn’t that Rachel was an out-of-touch emotional human being; she simply had a weak thinking skill.
You see, every day, you're using your 28 thinking skills without even knowing it.

Your brain uses these skills to do what it needs to do. If the thinking skills needed are weak, you have a hard time taking action.

The thinking skill that was getting in Rachel's way was projecting virtual relationships. That’s about seeing connections that aren’t obvious. So it made sense Rachel would spiral!
If she couldn’t see the connections in what was happening in her business, there’s a good chance her business would not survive.

Projecting Virtual Relationships
​Projecting virtual relationships means your brain can see how things relate to each other even when they're aren’t obvious. Like understanding that if your friend cancels plans today, it doesn't mean she doesn't like you - maybe she's just tired.
Or if a campaign isn’t bringing in results, it doesn’t mean the whole campaign is bad. Projecting virtual relationships is being able to see if it was the ads, the headlines, maybe it was the offer, etc.

Rachel's brain wasn't making those invisible connections. It wasn't connecting the fact that every year, every September was quieter because of the back-to-school season.

Once Rachel was able to see the pattern and what was actually causing emptier classes, she was able to actually do something about it. Simply changing the offering and schedule to fit with parents' current needs helped get more people into sessions. But she wasn’t able to make the right switch till her brain was able to make the connections, till her brain used projecting virtual relationships.

Here are three exercises I did with Rachel to help her improve projecting virtual relationships:

1: Connect the dots

We started by making the invisible connections more tangible.
Take a piece of paper and draw 10 circles. Within each circle, write down something that is happening in your business or life right now.
Then draw lines between any two circles that might be related and write down the connection.

This makes it more tangible for your brain to see connections that aren’t obvious.

2: This reminds me of

For 2-3 weeks, I had Rachel keep a “this reminds me of” journal where she’d write down something that happened and then finish this sentence:
This reminds me of a time when... (and write that time down)
After she’d ask: What do those two situations have in common?
Projecting virtual relationships is your brain's ability to see that two things that look different on the surface are actually connected underneath, which then allows you to solve the underlying problem.

3: Look for the exceptions

When your brain makes unhelpful conclusions, such as "nobody's signing up” and "everything is falling apart," go hunting for the exception.
Find one time it wasn't true.
One client who stayed. One month that was different. One situation where the pattern broke.
And take the time to understand WHY. What’s different about this person/month/situation?

Make that connection for your brain so you can use that information to help you get more of what you want.



The following September, which was about 8 months after I finished working with Rachel, Rachel sent me an email saying, “This is the first September in which I’ve actually made MORE money than I did in the summer. And I made more money this summer than I did any summer previously. “

This was only able to happen because her brain now picks up the many connections that aren’t obvious and uses that information to help grow the business.


Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!
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