It’s time to unlearn some of the ways you feel enough as an entrepreneur.
Have you have ever felt like you’re not good enough because you’re not making enough money or because your business is not where you want it to be?
Perhaps, you often feel low because your bank account has been dwindling, or you want to make more but you keep plateauing. Or you just aren’t getting the sales you want.
Or, maybe you just are barely making enough to get by?
If you feel low while thinking about your money or sales it’s possible your self worth is tangled up in your bank account.
Or, it is tied up in the tactics you use to earn money.
Let me start out by asking this: Where where do you think right now you seek and find your self worth?
Give yourself a minute to allow yourself to just think about that.
Where do you find yourself worth?
Do you seek it through other people?
People pleasing may come up for you.
Do you find it by seeking approval from other people?
Are you looking for tips passively by learning everything that you can so that you know everything.
Do you find your self worth in your social media likes comments engagement reach?
Is it found in your bank account or net worth?
Is it found in your productivity and how much you get done each day?
I’ve been studying, teaching, coaching, and working with women on enoughness and self worth for 10 years. When I ran my first business The Abundant Mama Project, we talked endlessly, daily, weekly monthly about establishing and feeling and reaching a state of enoughness.
When are we enough?
When do we have enough?
When do we feel like we have finally done enough?
Today, I’m talking about a very specialized department of self worth — the connection between your self worth and the money that you earn that you equate to your self worth and your bank account.
Listen to this episode on the Brave Yes CEO Show now.
For years, I worked with a lot of women who weren’t making any money because they were staying home with their kids as full-time. caretakers.
And their self worth plummeted.
They didn’t feel enough for a lot of reasons but mainly because they did not have contributions to make to their family finances and so they relied heavily on their partners for financial sustainment. They did not feel worthy.
So, a lot of the work we had to do in the program and group coaching was help them find their worthiness in other places.
Now, it’s kind of funny, maybe not funny, funny is probably not the word.
I’ve been doing online creating for 15 years and full-time making an income from it for 10 years. My work helps pay the mortgage for the house and the life that we have as a family of four. We do not have a lavish life. My business is designed for creative freedom and flexibility for caretaking of our twin daughters, now 16.
But I take my work very seriously. It is a full-time business. Not a hobby.
When I first started creating online and writing online and receiving money in return, I started out very high scale, in terms of numbers, high numbers of clients and customers, low cost offers, I’m talking $10 offers $15 offers $30 offers.
That’s that was for most of eight years.
And so you learn very early on in a model like that, that money can come in all day, every day.
It was not uncommon for me to open my email and see, you know, 10,15, 20 sales of something that I was offering. Sometimes my entire email inbox was flooded with sales.
This multi-daily action flooded me with dopamine as well. I opened my email repeatedly to see the sales coming in and, in the process of that, I became addicted to opening email where I would find for evidence of MY value and worthiness.
I am worthy because look, there’s a sale.
So because it was a lot of passive income, it was just so easy to see the money flowing in all day.
Unless it wasn’t.
Over time that pleasure seeking started to unravel my self worth. I literally began to equate money making to being worthy.
And I would check my email constantly to see if sales came in.
It didn’t matter if they were $10 or $100.
If something came in, I felt worthy.
I felt enough.
If no money came in, I felt terrible.
And I would slip into despair and feeling irrelevant.
The truth was that I was looking at the day to day. And not the big picture. I wasn’t tending to my holistic financial wellbeing. I was just reacting to the ins and the outs, and the ebbs and the flows, and I wasn’t able to see the big picture. All I was seeing was myself being not good enough if money wasn’t coming in. I was missing the actual problem that was there under the surface. Instead of focusing on my greatness, I focused on my weaknesses when money wasn’t coming in.
Once I woke up, I started to see this kind of dopamine attaching my self-worth to my net worth was not good.
I now work with many entrepreneurs who have struggled with this, who still struggle with this, so I’m not speaking like I was alone in this kind of thinking trap.
It’s fair to say, I feel worthy when somebody pays me that they value my work enough that they’re going to actually give me money in exchange, that’s fair to see that as a little gold star.
What I learned, though, is that to untangle my self worth from my bank account meant finding my self-worth in other places, and starting to really understand what self worth really is.
And that’s when I started my own self worth journey, which is what eventually led to me, completely closing down my first business, the Abundant Mama Project, because I realized that part of what was going on for me, by the end, was that I felt like I was not really living into my my full self.
I started a self worth journal, and a self worth practice, all of which I use with my clients in Brave Business Coaching who struggle with confidence and believing in their own value.
And I began to dig deep into my own spiritual audacity, and resilience and wellbeing practices, all of which I also use with my clients, who want to untangle their identities and their productivity, and their bank accounts from their self worth, and really start to shine in their industry.
All parts of your life are impacted when your worth is tangled up in your bank account.
Researchers call this financial contingency of self worth.
And as it turns out, it’s bad for your mental health.
And I, as I have said, can fully attest to that.
A study out of the University of Buffalo in 2020 found that those who see their self worth and have it tangled up in their net worth tended to be more socially isolated and lonely. So while they were so busy trying to earn more money, more money, more money, they actually were cutting themselves off from other important channels that could improve or sustain a positive mental health outlook.
Maybe you’ve been experiencing this as well as entrepreneurs, it’s really hard not to see your value in relation to the income you earn.
It’s even harder when there are so much attention being put to six, seven and eight figure businesses, which doesn’t necessarily mean you get paid a six-figure salary, by the way. Many high income business owners have a lot more overhead and aren’t earning what they would like personally.
And you wonder maybe why that’s not you why that’s not happening for you yet, and what might be wrong.
Money is often the only evidence, especially these days, is often the only evidence that your work is valued.
I know when I get evidence my work is valued in other ways, I feel just as great as I do that when I as when I earn income.
For instance, when I opened up and launched the Brave Yes Museletter, my weekly newsletter that I have on Substack I felt so great that people were subscribing. And, recently when a handful of people came up to me at an event to tell me they truly love my emails, I felt so wonderful.
My hard work is being seen and valued.
But, that’s just it.
Your WORK is valued.
However, the work stands alone. The work is what is being valued when money is paid.
The work, then the marketing is being valued when people sign up or say something or give feedback.
The work is not about YOU, not your self-worth. The true you has nothing to do with your self worth as a human being.
It’s just evidence that the work that you’re doing is valued the work.
The material, the resources that you’re putting out, are valued.
So while money is essential, we must make it, we need it. This is why my work focuses on money, meaning and the greater good as business owners. We needed to take care of ourselves and be prosperous. We can keep serving, keep creating and inspiring people and keep serving the world and our highest possible way. We also need money to influence the change we want to see in the world.
However, how much we earn, or if we earn at all has nothing to do with our self worth as human beings.
Your self worth is innate, you’re born with it, your life is worthy and value just for being born and it has nothing to do with your net-worth.
How amazing is that?
You’re sitting there right now questioning all the things and you are so worthy, just for being alive?
The question is, do you value yourself?
This is my favorite starter work to do with my private coaching clients. We work together discover your authentic, beautiful inner strength, inner self leadership skills, inner worth and our trust and our self awareness, self confidence, all of that. We build it together, you get to find it and discover it and shape it and sculpt it into a beautiful package that differentiates you, that really helps you shine and feel confident.
Your self worth though is not the same thing as your self confidence.
Your self worth is when you can truly say this: I am a valuable human being worthy of love, being seen being heard and taking up space.
When you feel that, when you believe that, when you feel that in every part of your body, you can walk into any room you can make any sale you can deliver any speech or say what you truly believe.
Because you know you are worthy to be there. Were they to be standing on that stage, were they to be a speaker in that workshop were they to be putting your message out there.
Self esteem or self confidence is what happens when we finally bring enough when we finally bring everything that we think, feel and believe into alignment and show up more boldly and daringly that’s getting on the stage and actually saying the things that you want to say, for real, like no holding back.
That’s confidence. It’s what you deliver. It’s how you deliver it your presence.
But just the fact that you’re up there, and that you believe that you believe that you deserve to be up there that self worth.
When you tie your worth, when you tangle that up in your bank account and all the other places where you might be seeking your self worth — you forget that what you’re really trying to do is believe that you are worthy to be doing the work that you’re doing.
So I want to invite you want to invite you to consider where you are currently seeking your self worth.
And dig a little deeper to see if it’s something you can start to untangle from one string at a time.
Because I can tell you that you can’t find your self worth and your bank account, your career choices, your number of invitations to social events, your list of accomplishments, awards or certificates, your relationships, your weight, your education, your age, or your gender, your possessions, who you know, or what your house looks like.
Your self worth is innate, and it is based on your own authentic gifts and strengths, which you can use in every possible moment.
So start tuning into what authentic beauty you could bring to this world if you just believed a bit more in your self worth. That if you could show up without striving without toxic productivity or destructive perfectionism, you are still worthy when you make mistakes. When you get rejected, when you don’t make a cent in a week, you are worthy, worthy to be who you want to be, say what you want to say, do what you want to do, you can start to develop that inner self leader who wants to be more authentic and courageous in your own way, by developing self confidence.
Confidence begins with believing in your own worth and knowing that you are a worthy human being, no matter what’s in your bank account.
And so when I started to really tend to my well being financially, and made that a top priority, not an afterthought, I really started to see the diff how I could pull my money making story away from my worth away from my enoughness.
One of the ways I began to untangle my worth from my bank account many years ago now, it was starting to tend to my financial well being financial well being is one of the eight spokes on my well being wheel that I know that we need as human beings to thrive.
So I have been maintaining a weekly ritual that I call Friday Financials that nourishes me in mind, body and spirit that that weekly Friday financial check in is all about maintaining a grounded balance and intentional practice, have tended to my current Money Story.
Rather than put my head in the sand — and I have clients who come to me saying I put my head in the sand when it comes to money — rather than suffer through the feast or famine ebbs and flows with the head in the sand, the financial wellbeing check in ritual is as much about goal-tending as it is about paying the bills and invoicing clients.
It is much about seeking peace around the state of the bank account as it is about making sure that I am staying in check around my mindset around money.
Running a business is not just about money — it brings meaning and purpose to our lives.
To be #BusinessBrave means we pour our heart and soul into what we offer, how we offer it and who we serve — without apology.
And, while we must keep our business separate from our soul-selves, we must also recognize that the kind of energy WE bring to our business is the energy our clients and possible clients experience.
So, your business … it’s personal.
So invest in yourself, the CEO, the owner, the leader, the founder.
5 Prompts for a Soulful Mid-Year Review for Creative Entrepreneurs
How am I different right now compared to the beginning of the year? What is still the same? Is that OK with me?
On a scale of 1-10, how much risk-taking have I done? If I invested in being more courageous, what would change for my business?
Am I leading or being dragged?
What am I being called to create or make this year that hasn’t yet happened? What is stopping me from making this happen?
What goal can I let go of now because this isn’t the right season or timing?
This midway point in the year is a great time to make space to reflect and contemplate not just on the numbers of your business — which may be out of your control — and, instead, focus on who you want to be and how you want to lead.
Which question speaks to you the most? Share in comments.
If your bank account is in a scary place, you’re not going to feel good no matter how much self-care you do.
Your wellbeing requires a healthy bank account.
This is how I define true prosperity — if you are able to feel good in all areas of your life because you feel safe, you feel secure and you can use your resources to help lift others up.
Too many of my good, good entrepreneur friends are sacrificing safety and security for doing the right thing.
Their own ability to thrive and prosper are hindered by being caught in the web of paradoxes of earning an income and making money as conscious entrepreneurs.
This month I’m focusing my work around what it means to practice liberated money practices, a concept I have been learning about and really focusing on for a very long time as an online creator and coach and that has been reiterated I’m really redefined by the work that I’ve been doing this year with Kelly Diehls and her We Are The Culture Makers Program.
Your financial wellbeing matters just as much as your physical wellbeing. Feeling safe and secure is vital to your own flourishing. You must make earning a thriving income a priority.
I can speak from personal experience that for a long time I had my worth tied up in my bank account — and this is a topic I’ll be exploring in the next episode.
Once I learned to cut my worth off of my income, I found another issue.
I was so busy trying to be nice, to be good to people that I had sacrificed my own thriving and flourishing.
And I can tell you that I was doing a lot of self-care but as long as I was pinching pennies and working hard to make ends meet — and experiencing countless nights of insomnia on how the mortgage would be paid …
I suffered.
I really want to talk about paradoxes that we as highly conscious wholehearted entrepreneurs bring to the table and the conditioning that we have been informed by around money making.
Listen to this episode now — or keep reading below.
I talked about money in the last episode on my framework of Money, Meaning and the Greater Good and how we can build businesses that don’t really truly bring all of that to the table so that we are not depriving ourselves of money, we’re not depriving ourselves of joy and we’re not depriving the world of our activism or our beliefs or our strengths or our values.
When we build a business based on those three things, we thrive.
But all too often now we are surrounded by a great sense of greed and unethical sales strategies.
I want to tell a story. I’m in a Facebook group where the leader is all about helping you make a lot of money by offering high ticket offers. I was brought into this group by a third-party. It’s not my kind of group but I enjoy seeing what the leader of the group is saying from time to time.
But recently, this group leader started to call out the “ethical sales” movement which I am a fan of and follow wholeheartedly ….
This entrepreneur is making millions of dollars by selling offers strictly to help people try and make millions. She was calling out ethical marketing advocacy as being harmful to women and preventing us from being able to make money.
I was watching this thread and in the responses to it because I am I am a proponent of an ethic of care and love and concern in our sales in our marketing but I’m also a student because I still have work to do on how to incorporate all of this in and still make money.
To call out ethical sales and money making without encouraging conscientiousness is harmful. I was glad when another more active member of the group said as much.
The truth is that making money ethically is harder. Much harder. But it’s not impossible.
I’m earning a thriving income right now and I’m doing it in a way that feels good, feels aligned and feels ethical and I’m being conscientious — very conscientious — about my practices.
But it’s not easy by any stretch.
There is a lot of mixed up information out there that has people confused and doing things like tactics and strategies that may not always work, that won’t feel good to you.
I am talking to conscious entrepreneurs right now. This is for those who struggle with asking for money, asking for the sales, who struggle with pricing.
So I want to talk about some of the paradoxes of money making as conscious entrepreneurs or conscientious entrepreneurs.
Here are 3 Paradoxes in Money Making as Conscious Entrepreneurs
PRICING AND WORTH
so the very first one that I want to address right upfront is the most obvious and that is our pricing oh there is so much juicy loaded complicated stuff stuff it is stuff around pricing and everybody seems to have the answers and I don’t know that anybody is correct I don’t know that anybody is wrong I just know that it is loaded and it’s filled with paradoxes.
There are essentially three school of thoughts around pricing. If you charge too much, you’re pricing out marginalized people and being inaccessible. If you charge too little, you are under earning and undercharging, which can make your work seem less valuable. The third way, which is the way I support, is finding the just right number that allows you to thrive while also keeping pricing accessible for most of your aligned clients.
THE MONEY MOMENT: Do what you need to thrive financially and what feels right for you and if it’s working, it’s working and if it’s not it’s OK to switch things around. Don’t charge X rate because someone else says you’re too cheap. Do you have enough money coming in at the rate you have and are you able to maintain a high level of capacity for those clients and the rest of your life and business? Then it’s enough.
TIME IS MONEY
We learn at a young age that time is money. And so one of the paradoxes we are seeing now is a real movement to make more and earn less. And, at the same time, a whole lot of hustle and grind is unfolding for people hoping to get lucky and strike it rich. As it turns out, time is money. Making money takes time. We either want ease or we want money. It’s rare that we get both.
THE MONEY MOMENT: Do what you need to do to handle the important stuff and when things are fine, let them be fine. See a therapist or work with a coach on how to cope through or how to make moves that are for future self and future business impact. Don’t waste time wasting time for that time is money conditioning.
GREED VS. THRIVING
Another paradox is in money making to thrive. Conscious entrepreneurs don’t want to look greedy so they tend to undersell and undervalue their work and worth. And yet being human is very costly and money is needed not only to survive but to thrive. This paradox of greed vs. thriving is important to break down.
THE MONEY MOMENT: Do you have enough money to pay your bills and feel like you are living a prosperous life? Do you have just enough, barely enough or plenty? Let this guide you on how much more pushy you could stand to be. Honestly? I could use more money. We have a lot of medical bills and inflation. I need to be more pushy so that I am experiencing prosperity.
Prosperity should be available to everyone. And, that may mean you have to learn new ways of putting your work into the world. As I have mentioned, my framework of being Business Brave is all about ensuring you thrive because you are running a business that is making money, making meaning for you the founder and making a difference in the world either directly or indirectly.
Today, I’m talking about what it means to be business brave.
Let’s get business brave.
This is a concept that came out of a coaching call that I had, where the coach was really asking me okay, what are you about? Like, what are you uh, you know, what’s your purpose? You know I talk about the brave yes all the time.
The YES is vital.
But what I’ve been trying to stress upon you all in these lists latest recent episodes is that there is so much more to our roles as leaders of our businesses. Beyond the Yes.
A lot of the work that we are doing is more understated, a lot of the courage work that we’re doing is much more, it’s more invisible.
And so today I’m talking about what it means to be business brave.
My passion and purpose is working with wholehearted, heart centered entrepreneurs.
These are entrepreneurs who believe greatly in making the world a better place, make helping people thrive, helping the land, thrive, helping systems thrive, whatever it is, but my people really want to see change, progress. And things just improve for people and systems and communities.
That is their passion. So yes, they are entrepreneurs. And there is more to it than that.
And so when I say let’s get business brave, what I’m really saying is, let’s really build businesses that are wholehearted, that are human centered.
And, by human, I mean you the founder, the leader of the business and those you serve, and those who are impacted by the work that you’re doing.
So money, meaning and the greater good.
You go to my website, you look at the homepage, the very first word you will see is money, meaning and the greater good.
And I say that because I really think that a business and the people that I work with and love to work with is not just business as usual.
When I say money, meaning in the greater good, what I’m saying is this isn’t just about a sales strategy.
This isn’t just about having a website and selling.
There is much more to it. It’s much more Spiritual, it’s much more aligned. And that is where we start to get into what it means to run and operate a wholehearted, heart centered business.
So when I say let’s get business brave, what I’m saying is, let’s do what it takes to run a meaningful business that is also about contributing to the greater good.
And let’s make sure that we are making money while we’re doing that, because this is our time, and our lives and our retirement on the line.
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.
