The BRAVE YES CEO mindset is the backbone of my business coaching and mentoring program.
This is a big chunk of the work that I do with my clients who want to make more clear, brave business decisions. And I’m, of course super passionate about it. And it really stems from first my own experiences as a leader as somebody who really in all spaces and jobs and experiences that I’ve had in my life, I have always been someone who could step up as a leader.
Brené Brown says that leaders are “called to choose courage over comfort all day long.”
Let me repeat that … “leaders are called to choose courage over comfort all day long.”
That is exactly why I believe all entrepreneurs and founders need to be #BusinessBrave.
Today, we’re going to dive into what it means to be lead as a Brave Yes CEO and be Business Brave.
On Cultivating Unshakeable Resilience to Brave the Business Arena
I am a big fan of Brené Brown, I am a Dare to Lead trained professional in her work, which means I can help you with every aspect of Brené Brown’s work through shame shielding and leadership and daring to lead and braving the arena.
This is a big part is a big influence in my work.
I am also positive psychology certified, which means I am also a resilience expert.
I believe strongly that the resilience part of running, operating and leading in a business is essential. And I have my own framework that I work with around unshakable resilience.
I am also certified as a mindfulness expert, trained in the power of awareness.
So being mindful, being self aware, being fully tuned in to yourself and your inner power is a big part of the work that I do as well.
And so when I talk about the Brave Yes CEO mindset, I’m really bringing a lot to the table.
But ultimately, it is to help you to be able to be that leader who is able to choose courage over comfort all day long, which is exactly what is necessary of us to run a business, especially to run a profitable business, especially to run a profitable business on our own terms.
And so, I’m going to talk about what the Brave Yes CEO mindset is, but first, I want to talk about what I see over and over and over again, in all of my experiences of working with entrepreneurs.
I happen to have a client who is another coach and entrepreneur, and I run her mastermind sessions, I host four masterminds for entrepreneurs a week. And I love this work because I’m working with such a diverse group of entrepreneurs around the world, all of whom are amazing.
And so in these experiences that I have with anywhere from 10 to 15 or 20 entrepreneurs a week, I’ve really gotten to know when and where I see Brave Yes CEO mindset showing up and when I see entrepreneurs operating in survival mode.
Signs of Survival Mode as an Entrepreneur
So let’s talk about survival mode first, because I think it’s really essential that you know, if you’re in it, so that you know where you need to grow and go to get out of it. And grow is absolutely the essential word there.
You might be in survival mode if …
You are constantly in self sabotage mode where you’re losing sight of your own vision of where you want to go and you’re getting stuck in the weeds. Sometimes you’re getting stuck and you are your own obstacle. You can’t get out of your own way.
You struggle to know what you are about or what you need to do. Each day you get to your computer or you get to your desk or you get to your office, and you’re going, Okay, what is next? What is next.
You are afraid to show up and be seen and be visible and take on the authority that you know you could be, your hiding, you might be in survival mode, if you spend a lot of time trying to please others, especially your clients or your team members, and forgetting about yourself or your family members.
You focus too much on today, this hour, and not nearly enough on next week, next month, next year. You might be in survival mode. If you are chasing too many shiny objects, and you’re getting distracted all the time, and you cannot focus.
You are afraid to make a move, because you might get it wrong. You also might be in survival mode, if you’re focusing very prominently on your weaknesses.
You feel out of alignment with your values.
You spend a lot of time comparing yourself or your business to others. or feeling like you should be farther along than you actually are. And you’re really focused on that.
All of these are signs of survival mode. But certainly, there’s other more common ones, like you spent all day putting out fires, you spent all day dealing with clients and you’re not working on the big picture of your business.
You’re doing the same things over and over, even if they don’t work. So that is the survival mode.
And that is what I see as the most common state and mindset most entrepreneurs in and in order to shift that you must grow and go toward a bigger picture, bigger vision.
This is what I mean by Let’s Get #BusinessBrave.
Braving Up requires that you begin to operate with a BRAVE Yes CEO mindset.
When you decide it’s time to grow your business and start to put yourself out there as a leader or expert, you are ready to upgrade your mindset to go with it. To get to that space of growth — that expansion you know that is necessary to get there — you have to Brave Up.
And so what is that?
How to Brave Up Your Mindset for Business Growth: Signs of a Brave Yes CEO Mindset
When I am working with clients on being more business brave, we’re working on mastering a lot of daily and weekly practices that are required of them to lead in their businesses, grow their sales, work authentically with clients and manage their diverse teams — all while working toward the greater good, which is a requirement for my clients.
You’re not afraid to shine bright and be visible.
You’re not afraid to show up as an authority in spaces that are not yours.
You’re not afraid to take risks. In other words, as a Brave Yes, CEO, you are taking risks you are showing up authentically in many diverse spaces.
You’re making decisions based on your own soul alignment. In other words, you’re not people pleasing because you know what you need and you’re going to focus your efforts on that. You’re choosing ease and joy over complication and people pleasing and the hustle and grind mentality. You’re taking imperfect action.
You’re using your strengths and your superpowers for good.
You’re living and leading fully in your values.
You’re not afraid to do business as unusual you creating a business on your own terms. And that means you’re letting go of all that comparison as that tends to strike when we’re feeling down.
So I’m curious on a scale of one to 10 … How do you rate your current state of mindset around your business? Where do you fall on the spectrum of being a BRAVE Yes CEO and operating with a BRAVE YesCEO mindset?
Are you at a 1, which means you’re not very far along? And you’re more in survival mode?
Are you more in the middle, where you have some room to grow and go, but you, you’re not the worst, you’re not doing the worst?
Or are you at the top of the scale, you’re a 10 where you’re taking those risks, you’re really living and leading in your own way.
You feel really confident in spaces when you show up. You’re not afraid to be visible, you’re out there, you’re doing it.
You’re attracting new audiences all the time. You’re really just putting yourself out there, you’re not afraid to do that. You’re taking the risks that are necessary to grow your brand to grow your identity to grow your personal brand to grow your business.
So if you’re at a one, then you’re more in that survival mode. You’re you’re living for today, you’re leaving for today.
And if you’re at that 10, you are absolutely there at that top of the range where you are really thinking about the future and really doing everything that you’re doing today is really for tomorrow. And tomorrow being in quotes right. It’s more about the future.
This mindset shift requires an expansion that I call Braving Up.
We cannot go from survival mode to BRAVE YES CEO mode without Braving UP.
A mindset change isn’t about repeating an affirmation. It doesn’t work that way. I am NOT a mindset coach, by the way, I would never tell you just think like a Brave Yes CEO and you will be one no, there is action. There is work that needs to be done. You’ve got to brave up.
You’ve got to brave up and that is my work.
One of my favorite stories. And this is not an entrepreneur story. But this was a woman who came to me with a career Brave Yes, she wanted to make and she didn’t know what that look like she had been in the same company for 20 years.
She hated the company that it had become because it was taken over by corporate and she was ready to get out. So, as we’re talking, I’m noticing that what she’s saying to me tells me that she’s a leader. But when I asked her, do you consider yourself a leader, she said no. She was not able to see her own power.
She was not able to even call herself a leader because she was so rooted in her weaknesses. She was so rooted in what she wasn’t good at, that she couldn’t even see her own worth, that she couldn’t even see the potential that she had the capabilities that she had as a leader.
Now, fast forward a good year, she took a job as a leader.
And on a call recently, she was like, You know what? I own that I’m a leader now.
That’s the expansion I’m talking about.
It wasn’t a one overnight mindset shift. She needed to do the work she needed to Brave Up so that she could see her own value, believe in her own value and really start to understand that not only was she a leader but she had immense leadership skills.
And we were able to cultivate that through my private coaching.
When we are working toward that brave yes mission, that bigger picture that fire that’s in our belly, we are required to expand we are required to brave up and that is action oriented. It is practice. It is business practice. It is wellbeing practice. It is spiritual practice. And it is a greater good practice.
All of that works together to help you shift into a BRAVE YES CEO mindset so that you are not afraid to take risks so that you can lead and choose courage all day long over comfort. And it’s necessary. It is necessary.
When I talk about Braving Up, I’m talking about a number of actions.
Understanding what your mission is both personally your soul’s goals and your business mission. Essential when we don’t have that vision that blueprint for the future life and future business that we want. We fall into stagnation of survival mode. Just getting through today, just getting through this week.
The best thing that we can ever do for our businesses is to have a higher purpose that we’re working toward. Hopefully connected to the greater good that the world needs, hopefully.
And another part of this, though, is rising with resilience.
We can’t brave up on our own — resilience is not a solitary adventure. In fact, there is very little evidence that resilience is going to show up for you when you do when you just do everything yourself and that DIY mentality.
When we root in with resilience, we are rooting in with a with a group of people or a number of mentors that we can lean on. We’re surrounding ourselves, with the people who are going to lift us up, help us feel stronger, help us feel more confident, help us give that give us the permission that we need to show up and stand out, to do the big things to do the bold things.
It also entails taking really good care of yourself. And this is another thing that I see very often with the entrepreneurs that I crossed paths with. If you are feeling not very confident, if your self worth is low.
If your energy is low, it’s really hard to go after, and do those courageous things that we need to do all day. As a business owner, as somebody who’s trying to put their brand out into the world or their message or their idea or their offer, it’s hard to do that when you don’t feel great. And why great, I mean, phenomenal.
I always tell people, I don’t show up to client calls unless I feel 150%. I’m ready to give 150% It is rare for me to ever show up at 100%. To do that I root into resilience, I tend to myself and I do the hard work of making sure that I am ready that I am self-aware and self-regulated and self-confident. How do I do that through actions through practices, daily practices, weekly practices, monthly practices.
What do you need to do to brave up?
When you consider yourself right now, in terms of where you want your business to go, where you want your future to take you what do you need to do to brave up?
Ask yourself that, journal on it.
Ask yourself, what it’s gonna take to get from where you are right now, to crossing that gap to where you want to be?
That ocean of gap, that ocean of uncertainty, that ocean of hard things, uncomfortable things?
What do you need to do to brave up so that you can do the courageous things that you need to do all day long to be the leader that you need to be for your business. And if you’re tired if you’re midlife and you’re tired, if you’re a mom and you’re tired, then it’s about boosting your capacity.
It’s about finding that fire in your belly to work toward the greater good that you know that you want to be a part of.
If you’re just dialing it in that survival mode. If you’re just getting through the day or the week, that’s survival mode. But if you’re getting to your desk on fire, ready to do bold, brave work ready to put yourself out there ready to show up.
That’s the brave yes CEO mindset.
Now, I have a lot of practices and tools and I’m going to share with you a Brave Up CEO Checklist that you can use to help you get adopt the mindset.
Are YOU ready to become more #BusinessBrave? Book a session with me to discuss your Brave Yes Business and Life mission and goals and let’s get a soulful, courageous action plan started for you. I’ve been writing, creating and coaching online for 15 years. Let’s chat and see how my expertise and experiences can help you put yourself out there and grow your business to the size you wish. Learn more and schedule here.
In the weeks and months after I began a deep dive into my Personal Fear Story — and this was this was several years ago now — I was doing a lot of reading on how to be more courageous.
At the time, I had a really wonderful business that had six figures but then kind of plateaued and I wasn’t sure where to take things from there.
I knew that I needed to take some risks but I really was afraid to do what I knew I needed to do.
In fact, I laughed a lot because while I was so busy not changing a thing, my business mentor at the time — and somebody who has actually kind of opted out of the business world since — was literally pivoting every five minutes it felt like. Seriously, every year she was rebranding or changing up her business model here I was slogging along with the same old model.
In 2020, I reached a point where I was like OK I cannot keep doing this – in fact, I believe the words that came out of my mouth was “if I have to do this for another year I am literally going to lose my mind.”
So when I threw the backpack over the wall in 2020 and burned down my first business, I am not being fully transparent.
There was so much more to the story.
There was a spiritual component to that move and I was spiritually and emotionally ready. I had done the work.
I’ve been doing a lot of work to get to that point before I burned down the old business and started my new one.
This idea of “feel the fear and do it anyway” was the most common advice that kept popping up as I was researching courage and bravery.
It kept coming up … fear the fear and do it anyway
fear the fear do it anyway
But I immediately knew that that was never going to work for me or my work or my clients it is rooted too much in toxic masculinity which I reject 1000%. I reject toxic masculinity, which promotes being tough powerful and hard on yourself.
A Brave Yes CEO Mindset is a part of what it means to be #businessbrave … but the thing is that a Brave Yes, when it’s not trivialized, is often a rare occurrence.
When you look back on your life you may remember handful, maybe two handfuls of Brave Yeses that you can’t really draw back on as memorable events in your life.
But being a wholehearted entrepreneur requires everyday bravery.
I can’t think of a day that has passed in the past 10 years of being an entrepreneur when fear didn’t show up and knock on my door.
This is precisely why my work has always been super spiritual.
In order to put our ideas out into the world — to put our services, our work, our words out into the world and ask for money in return — we must be business brave.
What is required of us is far more than just showing up.
We must have a fire inside of us to be brave — there has to be something bigger pulling us along.
Or else we’ll just retreat back into our nice quiet cave and hide a bit more.
Being Business Brave requires us to dig deeper into a more every day type of courage that rarely makes it to your social media feed.
How often do you write a post that says … I was terrified to fire a team member today, or I changed my outfit three times before I went live on Instagram or I sat crying over my lunch in fear that I won’t be able to pay the bills next month?
How often do you admit to fearing the other shoe is going to drop, that this visionary work you’ve built is all going to fall apart?
This is why we must be business brave. And this is what I am on fire to do in my Brave Business Coaching program — where I work with my clients on feeling whole, aligned and alive in your business so you can upgrade your confidence, your cash and your commitments to doing good in the world.
Those three things are not mutually exclusive. They are interconnected.
The more we know our own self-worth, the more confident we become … the more cash we bring in and the more good we can do in the world.
To do any of that, you must become business brave.
To be a brave business leader you really need to put yourself out there you have to believe in something so strong that it drives your every action.
This is why I believe so strongly that business is spiritual, especially for those of us those of us who are a wholehearted entrepreneurs.
Being business brave requires that we have something passionate that we care about. t is about having a soul lead vision. I’ve talked about the importance of listening to your soul goals.
If you have a vision of how your business can change lives — whether that be your teams lives or your customer and clients lives or your families lives or your communities lives — whatever whoever is impacted by your business — you have to have an internal drive that is about making life better for people, for all beings.
This soul led vision I am speaking of is rooted in our own personal meaning, it’s rooted in sharing our values with the world, it’s rooted in a higher purpose.
You may be thinking all we do is paint houses but underneath that you have a desire to make things more beautiful, to make people happier in their homes, which is a spiritual practice.
So many of us lead businesses that are about appreciating beauty, appreciating excellence and this kind of soul lead mission is necessary in order to really catapult your business to the next level.
So if you’re just humming along, maybe things are fine, maybe they’re not and you’re thinking there’s something more for you — then it is possible you need to connect with your soul-led mission.
One of my favorite quotes that I share often is by D. Antoinnette Foy who wrote this: “I used to extinguish under the weight of living but one day I reached into my chest, dusted off my courage and asked myself, “Where is your fire?”
This is what it takes to build brave businesses.
This is what it takes for us to be brave business leaders.
We have to have to connect with that inner fire from time to time and connect it without work and our values.
This is a business practice and a spiritual practice.
It’s a business practice, which is a process we must hone and tweak and do often — so that we are reconnecting with our purpose and our why.
And this is a spiritual practice, at least that’s how I see it.
I know that when I’m working out with a really super aligned client we always start with a dying out flame.
The flame is on its last leg.
Then, we discover something that sparks the flame and it grow and grows exponentially.
I have witnessed this time and time again.
And it gives me goosebumps every time but it’s like this idea the flame was always there and but it just needed the right conditions to catch fire and become hot enough to light you up.
But it Begins in that in that inner place, your inner world and the dying flame is the knowing …
The knowing there’s something more for you , that you have a higher calling and you want to Put It out there.
This kind of calling and work is not for every single business owner, but it is for you if you are a wholehearted entrepreneur if you are trying to work toward the greater good …
Then you have a flame within.
If you are trying to Share Your visionary Message, Your Dream, Your Vision to help all beings thrive and flourish …
Then you have a flame within.
Without Something to Believe and you are likely Just Showing up and dialing It in
Without Something to Believe in you’re Just Showing up and doing Whatever It Takes to Get through the day
That’s when you know it’s time to Tap into That Source of Fire Within You,
And when you figure it out, that’s when You Get Swept up … You Get Swept up in a Waves of fire in your belly to doing braver work.
No more hiding.
You have a mission. A purpose.
A movement to spark.
A system to change.
A life to transform.
A change to make
An idea to spread.
So Let Me Leave You with This Question:
What is Your Brave Yes Mission?
In order to Be Business Brave, We have to Show up and do the hard things of creating Change, sparking Change, Pushing for Transformation, healing the world in all the Ways that We Can Empower others to Thrive.
Your business is Not about You — this is Not about Your bank account.
This is About Contributing to the greater good.
Having A business that is Truly About Making the world A Better place — one person at a time, one family at a time, one block at a time.
Your Brave Yes mission is somewhere deep inside and it will take spiritual practice, spiritual resources, spiritual rituals, to get to It, to refine it, to tweak It, to bring It back alive but It is in there and I encourage you to go deep to find It.
I encourage you to go deep to find THAT flame within you and connect to it, blow on it and make it come back alive.
I encourage you to Reconnect with yourself and your soul’s goals to bring It Alive so you can Do What It Takes to Let Your soul-led vision and purpose surface …
rise
expand
Ascend
Need help finding your Brave Yes Mission? Let’s connect and chat about it. I offer a free coaching discovery session where we can begin to explore this very thing — or any other struggle you are having in growing your business. Learn more here.
I was afraid to take the leap, afraid to put more pressure on myself, afraid to put more weight on my plate.
But honestly, it just felt like a truly impossible thing — to start an email list from scratch is kind of wild considering that at one point at the highest my email list had 25K subscribers.
To start with ZERO and know that I would need to nurture it to grow it felt … impossible.
Small goals often have a fast turnaround and lead to small outcomes.
Bigger goals — dare I call them impossible goals — require more — more time, more patience, more courage, more confidence.
As a coach for entrepreneurs, I work with my clients on the Brave Yes Journey, which is almost always about playing bigger in their work, taking up space and making bold changes for greater life alignment.
I encourage my clients to set stretch-y goals — not for achievement purposes but because personal transformation happens just beyond our comfort zone.
When we do something that seems nearly impossible, our courage and confidence grow exponentially.
My story alone is proof.
Listen to this Brave Yes CEO episode here — or keep reading below:
One day, more than 10 years ago, I began to consider what it would look like to do what seemed impossible — to build an online business.
That day, I went deep into a rabbit hole and never returned.
I learned everything on my own: how to build a website, email marketing, social media marketing, content marketing, SEO optimization, and, of course, online course and program development.
I remember thinking moving my website from wordpress.org to com — or whichever it was — was a huge undertaking. I remember thinking hosting a webinar for a few hundred people was intimidating. I remember thinking I’d never reach 10K email subscribers.
It was all impossible.
Until it wasn’t.
With the help of some amazing coaches and mentors, a few courses and masterminds and a whole lot of just figuring it out … I made it happen within a year, building a Facebook page to 35K, website traffic above 100K. Until 2020, it was hard to explain how I operated an online business serving women around the world and yet I’ve been doing it for a decade — nine years full-time. Long before Zoom even existed.
All along, I was going into other rabbit holes, learning and training and developing my skills that led to weekend retreats. online retreats and ultimately coaching.
Then, I began to unlearn almost everything because everything is different now — the whole market has changed and how to survive in it is different. The rules are different.
The way the online world works is different. We change. We evolve. We pivot.
Now, I coach entrepreneurs to cultivate the confidence and courage to put yourself out there and really grow your authority and take up space with your dreamiest ideas and most unbelievable offers.
The Brave Yes mission is always impact.
We do this through my own Brave Yes CEO coaching methodology — capacity planning for your unique life circumstances, courage coaching and soulful and aligned business mentoring.
Never forget that the impossible is always just on the other side of grit.
Never forget that the impossible is on the other side of resilience.
Never forget that the impossible is just on the other side of curiosity.
Never forget that the impossible is just on the other side of play.
Never forget that the impossible is only possible once you see it, feel it, taste it, touch it and believe in it.
Now, most mornings, I try to live by the “6 Impossible Things Before Breakfast” rule we learned about in Alice in Wonderland.
“I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
— Alice in Wonderland.
What’s your impossible thing?
When your goals are too small, you may experience stagnation rather than stretching into the spaces where your confidence will grow, where your personal growth will happen.
So ask yourself this: Are my goals too small?
If you aren’t sure, check-in on the timeframe.
Are they going to take a few days or weeks to master? A weekend?
Or, are you working toward a more ideal future you that pushes you outside your comfort zone a bit — that’s going to take a few months, or even a few years?
It’s always good to be working toward both immediate goals — and a Brave Yes goal, something that is aligned with your future self and life that you long for someday.
Either way, breathe deeply on this journey to the impossible — to your YES, to your Brave Yes.
Because while it may seem impossible right now — I assure you it won’t always be.
I would love to talk to support you on your Brave Yes Journey.
