I like to chart growth. Who doesn’t, right?
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When we’re kids, we love standing with our heels to the wall as someone place the flat edge of a ruler on the top of our heads and marks off our height with a marker.

As a parent, it’s even more rewarding to be the one holding the ruler and the marker.

I live in the same house I grew up in. If you open up the door to the tall pantry cabinet in our kitchen, you’ll see it’s covered with dates and names next to horizontal lines at varying heights.

I love that the back of that door is a road map for two generations of growth. If you trace the dates and lines, you can see how both my brother and I and our daughter and son grew over the years and what height we were at different ages.

To be honest, it’s kind of a free-for-all. There’s one mark very close to the floor where as a kid my brother wrote his name and date of birth to signify how small he was as a baby and one very close to the top of the door to indicate how tall he thought he’d be as an adult. You can also see the year my son grew eight inches in 12 months and note when both of our kids became taller than me.

Height isn’t the only kind of growth I monitor. I also chart the growth of our businesses.

I never used to. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t give much thought to business growth. At least, not until I had to.

The business I had at the time took a hit in mid-2016, and in 2017, it seemed like everything was falling apart. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I was supposed to be secure, status quo. It took me awhile to accept that there was more out there for me professionally and that for me to actually HAVE it, I had to go out and GET it.

I was not yet the person I needed to be in order to step into that role. Before I could see the potential of what could be, I had to breakdown everything I thought I knew about having a business and what I could do. I call 2017 the year of the breakdown, and it was brutal.

In 2018, a new determination and vision rose up. As hard as 2017 had been, after much prayer and questioning and seeking, I felt God say in my spirit that 2018 was going to be the year of the breakthrough, and it was.

I discovered gifts I didn’t know I had, and talents that had been long dormant started rising to the surface again. And suddenly this girl who swore up and down she didn’t want to be an entrepreneur and didn’t want to be in charge of a business was singing a different tune.

It took a lot of hard work and long hours, but I started building a network and honing my skills, and by the time 2019 rolled around, I knew I was in a new place. My goal for 2019 was balance, and it’s been very, very good.

I traveled more than I ever have and spent time with my family taking our kids new places and doing new things. I’ve spent holidays unplugged and given myself the flexibility to have time off when my grandma passed away. We also exceeded the financial growth goal we set for our business.

And now, with 2020 on the horizon, it’s time for the next phase of growth.

Breakdown. Breakthrough. Balance.

And now … Belief.

God is not done with our businesses. There is more He wants us to accomplish. There are more people He wants us to serve. The biggest thing that stands in my way when it comes to increasing the impact and influence my skills and services provide is, well …

Me.

I’m thinking a lot this December about how to get out of my own way — and in more areas than one. In my business, yes, but also in my faith, relationships, health, personal development … pretty much any area is currently on the table.

My belief needs help. Isn’t that true for us all? I’m asking God to align my belief with what He knows to be true and what He has planned for my faith, my life, my relationships, my faith, and my business.

Whatever He knows to be true is true whether I believe it or not. So I want to believe it. I want to be on THAT side of the fence in 2020 and beyond.

Look for big things from Christa Nichols Messaging in 2020. The Written Results Academy will be opening its doors. This program is the only online sales copy training platform that dives deep into not only the writing, but the foundation behind what makes sales copy convert – data and analytics, strategy, psychology, and more. They’re actionable and direct, giving you the exact step-by-step process I use to create sales funnel copy, email retargeting sequences, and Facebook ad copy that sells out beta launches, breaks sales records, and fills the wallets of my clients.

Want to be the first to know when they’re live? Click here to join the waitlist.