I did something really scary a couple of weeks ago.
I decided its time to uplevel again. It’s been two years now since I launched Vet Harmony and I’m feeling like both myself and the business are ready to evolve and grow.
That means investing in support from my coach.
We aren’t meant to do everything alone and using other people’s support and expertise just makes everything flow that much better, especially when you don’t have a boss or a team around you.
Ok, sounds great….. so what’s so scary about that?
Two things.
It means investing money – which always makes me a little anxious.
It also means stepping up and pushing myself to move beyond my comfort zone, to be fully accountable and prepared to mess things up as I learn. For a recovering perfectionist, that is incredibly scary!!
I’m telling you this because I know that my clients often experience both these limiting beliefs when they are wanting to explore coaching but nervous about it.
I’ve done it twice before with this business – once for growth and once because I needed help escaping from indecision and self-doubt.
After going back to work from my maternity leave, I soon realised that I no longer wanted to travel so much and I wanted more flexibility and I needed to re-think things. I knew I had a really useful amount of knowledge that could be of service in my head, but no idea how to package my knowledge into a product or service.
I invested a few thousand pounds with business coach Louise Presley Turner from My Business Baby and spent 8 months designing and creating Vet Harmony. That wasn’t so painful financially at the time as I had savings to pull from. It was however deeply challenging self-belief and comfort-zone wise because:
• I had a 14-mth old baby and was pretty sleep-deprived
• I had no income coming in and I was the main breadwinner
• I’d never run my own business before
• There was a big dollop of impostor syndrome to overcome
With Louise’s help though, the launch of Vet Harmony was very successful and I was up and running. 😀
The second time I uplevelled, I was about a year into running Vet Harmony and it required the biggest set of cojones I think I’ve ever had to muster yet!
The coaching was going amazingly as that’s my Zone of Genius and my clients were getting great results.
However, learning how to sell myself online was definitely a Zone of Competence only!
This had resulted in not enough people knowing about me, which meant not enough income coming in to the point where I wasn’t sure I could continue.
I had no idea whether this was just the normal trajectory of the first year of a coaching business or whether I wasn’t doing the right marketing things.
The fear-based part of me was worrying I’d have to go back to employment.
The fierce independent part of me was resisting this hugely as I loved my business and the important work I was doing with my clients and I didn’t want to give up!
So I took a deep breath, borrowed a big chunk of money from my best friend and invested in the mindset and business coach I still have now, the amazing Suzy Ashworth.
Thanks to 5 months of one-to-one support from her, I was able to get past my vulnerability of being visible fears and be brave enough to really put myself out there. I’ve not looked back since and the second year of running Vet Harmony has felt very different.
However, at the time I invested in that coaching, I was knee-deep in the fears:
- What if this doesn’t work and I can’t pay my friend back?
- What if no one will employ me anymore and we’ll be in financial trouble?
- What if Suzy takes one look at my business and says it’s not going to work?
- What if I’m not good enough to be able to learning the marketing stuff?
These were all totally irrational fears however they felt quite potent at the time. But I took the action anyway.
Why?
Because when you’ve really invested in yourself like that, you become super-sharp focused on what you need to do and on taking the action you need.
You make time for the important stuff because this HAS to work – procrastination is no longer an option.
You no longer feel you are dealing with things by yourself and having a cheerleader who believes in you keeps your self-belief where it needs to be.
You massively fast-track your progress as you can piggie-back off someone else’s expertise and not have to make all the mistakes yourself in order to learn.
Also, from a professional perspective, I can’t expect my clients to invest in themselves and their growth if I’m not also doing the same!
I’m sharing all this with you, because what I know to be true is that if you really want to grow or move to a new level in your life, you HAVE to be willing to take action before you feel ready. Every time I’ve uplevelled or wanted clarity on an area of my life, I’ve never ‘been able to afford it’, I’ve never ‘felt ready’ and I’ve never regretted it!
That brings me onto some exciting news, as the reason I’ve invested with Suzy
again this Autumn is to help me package together all the insights gained from my last two research studies. I’ve really listened to what your top challenges are and what you’re most interested in learning about and am creating something rather special that I will be launching in January 2020 so watch this space…
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