Hey there, wellness entrepreneur. Welcome back!
Today we’re going to talk about an important topic that’s both near and dear to my heart because I had to work through several gross edges to get to where I am now where my revenue can be from anywhere 15K months, 20K, 25K plus months consistently.
And here’s the most important part: I’m helping more people than I’ve ever helped before and my schedule feels manageable. I love the work that I’m doing both mostly online with my business coaching clients and I still have some patients that come to see me in the she-shed. And I just love all of that. I’m working less hours per week.
And what has enabled me to get to this place I feel is overcoming and working with some of my innate personalities and constitutions and just learned patterns and behaviors that I’ve developed over time because my nervous system has tried to “keep me safe.”
How Imposter Syndrome Took Over Me During the First Years of My Business
So what does that look like specifically? A lot of imposter syndrome when showing up to market in both my e-mails and on social media or anywhere where I’m showing up in my workshops leading to small mousy if you would say, calls to action or not really clearly describing all that it is that I do.
Even being so complex and confusing in my social media and e-mails in attempt to prove to my audience that I was worthy of doing this work, for example, as well as people pleasing, in both my content and in my consultations, especially showing up in a way that I thought people would want to hear or afraid to say something even though I knew that my audience needed to hear or the person on the consultation needed to hear, but instead shying away from that and saying what I knew would be accepted or at least tolerated and not push any buttons where I really would not want to upset anyone when reading my e-mails or cause any uncomfortable emotions for my audience.
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Now here’s the thing, I thought I was doing all of this in service of my audience to not push them, not feel spammy, not be manipulative, not stir up emotions when reading my e-mail. I thought it was all in service of them or on my client calls or consultations, not frustrating any clients, but the truth of it is, is that a lot of it, my hesitations, my fear of being bold, it actually is in service of me because I feel uncomfortable or I’m afraid of the consequence of showing up in a certain way, so it shows up in the form of imposter syndrome, not thinking who am I to be saying this or doing this type of work, or in people pleasing and shying away from saying the thing that needs to be said or taking a potential client or client or in my content really highlighting the root of a problem and circumventing or actually avoiding that completely.
So I really had to do a lot of work with both strategy, business strategy and healing of my nervous system and coaching on my mindset to allow me to show up in a way that is a leader, a confident, certain embodied belief in myself, a leader, a guide, someone to help you or my clients, my potential clients, walks a path that they want to go through and knowing that every step is not going to be comfortable.
In business, yes, we get into the work or this world of entrepreneurship to fill our passions, to help people the way we imagine, to run a business the way that we want to run it. But at the same time, not everything you’re going to do in the business is going to light you up. The way to hit 20K class months consistently involves some tasks of your business like consistent content creation to bring in consistent cash flow. And you have to figure out how to work with both your own mindset, your own nervous system, schedule and all the things so you can do that because relying 100% on referrals only or word of mouth only can only get you so far. That is one part of your marketing strategy.
How To Work With Your Own Imposter Syndrome or People Pleasing
So today we’re going to talk about how to work with your own imposter syndrome or people pleasing so you can get more consistent cash flow, help more people most importantly because I know that is what fuels you every day – thinking about all the people that you can help with all your knowledge and certifications.
Not Everyone Will Resonate With You, And That’s Okay
And here’s the truth, you’re not everyone’s cup of tea. Not every single person that’s going to land on your content or read your e-mails or meet with you in-person is going to resonate and jive with you. That’s not the goal.
As a recovering people pleaser myself, I had to come to realize that I’m not going to please everyone. Not everyone’s going to resonate with me fully. Even though I know I can help a lot of people in business, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to vibe with my energy and it’s nothing personal to me. It’s what’s going on for them in their nervous system and their learned behaviors and what works with their constitution and their personality or where they are in the path of entrepreneurship.
So I had to understand as both a practitioner who owned my own brick and mortar and as an online business coach is reaching and speaking to the people that want to hear from me and focusing on them because I realized when I speak to them, I can more boldly show up and go deep in my content in a short amount of time for a less than 10-second reel. I can give a lot of value through a caption but it doesn’t have to be lengthy and overly verbose. It can be more concise and people can understand that I am an integrity and an authentic practitioner.
And how do I know? Because people tell me. I can’t tell you the number of DMs and I so appreciate anyone. Thank you so much. If you’re one person reading now who sent me one of these DMs that they would say, “Oh, Alison, I love following you because I know you’re a practitioner that’s an integrity,” “Alison, I watch your stuff or I follow you because it looks like you’re an authentic practitioner. I can see that you’re honest. I can see that you practice what you preach,” I get many of these style of DMs frequently.
And the only way for me to learn how to show up consistently in my content, so whether someone reads my e-mails or sees an Instagram or a Facebook post is to learn how to trust me and know that I don’t know everything. I’ll never know everything. And at the same time, whatever topic I might decide to teach on, whether it’s here on the blog or in any of those social media channels or my e-mail that I have value to deliver right now, the one person listening or the handful of people listening or if they’re tuning into one of my live workshops or webinars, the 50 to 100 people watching live and on the replay, I can give them insights and wins and takeaways right now. I know I can do that.
And for me to show up live or plan content in a short amount of time where I’m not spinning my wheels because I’m hemming and hawing on exactly what to say or how to show up to people please or get over my own imposter syndrome is to find that belief in my body and to know that people are going to have their opinions.
And for a long, long time, I really used to take all of the opinions personally and I would let it chip away at my confidence, chip away at my own self-esteem because I would take it so personally, chip away at my ability to embody confidence even as a practitioner, but that doesn’t serve me obviously for a lot of reasons, but more importantly, it doesn’t serve my audience because when I don’t show up fully or consistently or boldly, then you as the audience, you don’t get to hear the benefit of the full value of my work because I’ve held myself back. You don’t get the big insights or the wins because I’m not showing up as consistently because I’m telling myself in the back of my head, “Oh, who am I to say this? Someone else is going to say it better. Someone else has already done this before and it’s better than how I can do it.”
But when I remember my audience and showing up consistently, it’s in service to them and people are going to have their opinions regardless and it’s more about what’s going on for them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that as a person, something’s wrong with me. I am a whole being, a whole person now and they just might not like some of my behaviors or personalities. And that’s okay. Or I showed up in a funky energy and they’re feeling that funky energy so they’re not resonating. And that’s okay too because I’m going to learn how to show up from a better place in the future.
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Creating Content And Showing Up Consistently
And this allows me to create a lot of content every week consistently. Let me give you some examples of where I show up in one week. In one week, these days, I’ve been doing seven to 14 reels or posts, sometimes more than once a day and I schedule ahead of time. I show up in my stories consistently anywhere from two to four times a week in promotional material with sneak peeks into my personal life as well. I show up here on the blog each week. I show up in my Facebook group. I do a live each week there. I write two to three e-mails consistently to my list each week.
I repurpose a lot of my reels from Instagram to both Facebook and threads. I repurpose my e-mails to both Instagram and Facebook. I repurpose my podcast to both a blog and then I repurpose that blog to LinkedIn and Pinterest, audiograms to show up on YouTube. They’re just audiograms, so it’s promotional material. I don’t have any really long form content on YouTube except for my client testimonials because it’s a great place to house them so then I can share them on my web.
I also deliver a free webinar or low-ticket paying workshop every about six to eight weeks, sometimes 12 if I’m in a really busy period, but most of the time it’s every, I would say even sometimes four to eight weeks, I’ll deliver some type of workshop.
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My System and People So I Can Show Up In Multiple Platforms
Now, this is not to overwhelm you. Here’s the help that I have for these days at my income level and where I am. I have a VA that helps me project to project. I have a Facebook Ad strategist. She used to run my ads, but actually I run my ads myself, but I can check in with her for coaching and feedback and I also get help with my registration pages. I submit it both to her and my mastermind. I’m also part of an Instagram mastermind to help with content creation.
I have VAs that help me to repurpose content to both LinkedIn and Pinterest. I have a VA that transcribes my podcast into a blog. I have an SEO person that optimizes that blog for my website. I have a podcast audio editor and I’m in the process of creating SOPs to hire a VA that’s more than just project-based or repurposing audiograms or making graphics for my workshops that’s more of a right-hand person consistently in my business.
And I say all this not to overwhelm you because one thing I could do in my business is I don’t have to be in all these places, but I like to test my content and I feel like because I have the VA set up now and we have SOPs and repeatable systems that it is easy for me and it doesn’t take a whole lot of time to repurpose a lot of my content on these other platforms.
Now, is it really needed? Probably not, but for now that’s what I am doing until I don’t have to do that or I have a VA that takes over all the repurposing for me. So for you, just know that all of this didn’t start all at one time. I started with one e-mail a week and two to three social media posts a week, that’s it. Then I added in the podcast and then I added in more posts per week and then several years later, I just recently, really this year, started e-mailing twice a week and repurposing to more places.
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So the point of this is, is that the more I’ve worked with my nervous system to both work with people pleasing and just for now actually the people pleasing when I’m writing and creating content doesn’t come up so much anymore and the imposter syndrome where I used to kind of freeze and not know what to say and it would really slow me down in my content creation happens way less as well.
So I can create content much, much faster. I can show up in more places. I can show up on Instagram more than one time a day and not feel so drained because I’m not allowing the number of likes or people’s opinions about me to trigger me or chip away at my own self-confidence because I’m just not allowing it to impact me the way that it used to. So I can create more content, a lot more content, more efficiently in less time because my schedule has never been shorter during the week and I’ve never worked with more people or shown up in all these places in such a big way before.
So the only way I’ve been able to do that is to both work with my nervous system and heal a lot of these patterns and just add in layer by layer, week by week, showing up more.
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Strategies, Mindset, and Areas To Coach On For Yourself
So here’s some strategies, mindset, and areas to coach on for yourself to help speed up the process for yourself because truthfully with all the e-mails being sent out there these days and all the people showing up on social media, frequency is important.
Frequency of just letting people know what it is that you do. Frequency of just showing up and highlighting your expertise. That is important. You can fit it into your schedule. So in the beginning when I would show up to create content and feel frozen, not knowing what to say or write out a sentence in e-mail but then erase and delete it because I’m like, “Oh, that’s going to bother someone. That’s going to ruffle someone’s feathers. It’s going to trigger them.”
I would take a step back, breathe and ask myself why, “What exactly do I think that they’re going to feel or interpret this? And instead I would bring my focus back to them. I would focus on that potential client that I want to help. And what can I say in the message to help them today? What is the emotional transformation that they’re really seeking?
So if they are feeling overwhelmed and for example, me just highlighting all that I’m doing weekly overwhelms you. What can I say to take that tension off, to alleviate that and let you know in a clear, direct and simple way that you can get through this. You can do this. I believe in you. But I can say that confidently because if I can do this, then anyone can do this. I am not a special snowflake and I am a big time introvert. So if I can show up as frequently as I am and as boldly as I am, then I know you can too.
Number one, figure out for yourself what is triggering you? What are your thoughts? What are your beliefs? Are you a people pleaser? Do you have imposter syndrome? Are you trying to prove your worth through complex captions and reels and long posts and e-mails that people just don’t make their way all the way through because they’re busy? I’ve been that, I’ve been there, totally have done that, still do that these days sometimes. That’s just not to say all long form content is bad because YouTube long form content definitely does well. I have some longer reels that do well.
But to find out what does well and what doesn’t, the second part of this is testing your content. You have to have the ability to put out a lot of content into the world, whether that is a podcast, Instagram post, a blog, a Facebook live, any type of content anywhere. You just have to put a bunch of content out and test. Some of that’s going to flop. Some of them aren’t going to get any engagement or likes. Some people might even leave hurtful comments on your posts, but you have to remember that you’re putting content out to figure out the people that you want to help.
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What do they need to hear? What really resonates with them? So you can do more of that. You take the data on the content not to personally criticize yourself saying no one wants to hear you, your content sucks, no one really likes you, what you have to say isn’t helpful. It doesn’t mean any of those things. It’s just data to say that, oh, maybe that hook wasn’t compelling enough or the opening frame of your reel wasn’t eye catching enough for people to stick on that reel and watch the whole thing through. Or maybe your e-mail subject line didn’t catch their attention enough to make them want to open the e-mail or the first sentence of the e-mail didn’t catch them in a way to want them to read the next sentence and all the way down to the bottom to click on the link and book a call or sign up for your workshop. All just data, not something personal against you.
For me, I find that thought and that reminder so, so helpful so I can keep going instead of having a fractured energy and having it become an energy leak for me. So then by the end of the day, I’m just like exhausted. My client, Alison, we’ve really been working on this for her reels because she has a ton of potential. She has so much video content too that’s really eye catching because she’s a personal trainer and she is so, so fit and lifts very big weights and does a great job of videoing some of that and she really knows her person and her reels do have the potential and have gotten thousands of views before but just not consistently.
So we’ve been just looking at each reel and breaking it down. What’s being said in the caption? What’s being said in the hook? What’s the watch time? How can we shorten the reel so it’s more punchy and impactful and get the message across but in a shorter amount of time so people watch the whole thing? And then Instagram considers it to be great content and pushes it out to more people and we’ve been doing that and her visibility has been improving.
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She still has content that falls flat just like all of us will, myself included and all you have to remind yourself when that happens is, “Okay, that didn’t resonate with my audience so much. Was it the format? Was it the message? Was it the style of content? What was it? And then tweaking and refining and trying it again and then when content does work, meaning it gets more views than normal or more engagement or more likes or on the email, more opens, more clicks, repeat that. Write that down, remember that and do it again because then when you do it again, you’ll create it faster the next time and you’ll be more confident that it’s going to have more reach and impact to get you more client and have more conversions because you know it works.
Don’t mean literally copy and paste everything word from word but take the theme, take the style, take the essence of the message and just rewrite it in a slightly different way, that’s all. Don’t have to recreate the wheel for every single piece of content. I’ve learned that the hard way.
And the last thing is just continue to support yourself, honor what you’re feeling, really track down why and bring it to coaching. Whether you’re part of a mastermind, bring it to your coach, bring it to me if I’m your coach, get a coach if you don’t have one, just somewhere where you can empty your brain and work through this so each time you show up, you’re less and less triggered and you can do more and it’s not from a place of hustle or overworking, it just becomes part of your weekly schedule.
And have outlets outside of your work, make sure that you have outlets and time to do things that reset your nervous system because again, the path of entrepreneurship, you’re going to work through uncomfortable emotions, you’re going to work through uncomfortable growth edges and hit off days and off moments and you need a place to recharge so that you can keep on going because again, it’s nothing personal against you. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have a viable business or you can’t make it as an entrepreneur. It’s none of those things that happens to every single one of us.
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So some of my recharging and filling my battery that I do weekly and daily are yoga. Yoga by myself, yoga with my daughter I love. She knows that I go to a class by myself because sometimes I just need some of that alone time. So I go to different styles of yoga. I go to more of a nervous system, slow flow, gentle restorative class. I love sound healing and I also love my vinyasa challenging vigorous style of yoga as well.
I do walks for a perfect nervous system reset for me. Sometimes I listen to podcasts or my own replays of my masterminds that I’m in and they keep me inspired and keep me going and motivated. And sometimes I go on walks and for some reason my brother came to mind and I experienced grief and I put on music, whether it’s just chakra hurts type music or brain wave hurts type music and I heal and I grieve or sometimes I just walk and I don’t grieve. I don’t listen to any music. I have earbuds in my ear because I think I start out on the walks thinking I’m going to listen to a podcast or do something and then I get out on the walk and I realize I just need to be. I just need to hear the birds. I just need to feel what’s going on in my body and uncover why and work through my thoughts as I walk and that is very therapeutic.
I go to strengthening class to feel stronger in my body. It also helps me to feel stronger to work with imposter type syndromes, imposter type syndrome, imposter syndrome thoughts, type thoughts. I also, it also helps me to feel stronger to work with any people pleasing that doesn’t serve my clients or me.
I sometimes put the heated table on my massage table. I get comfy blankets and bolsters and I just lie there for 20 minutes and I do nothing.
I journal. I like to take time to think about my content. I actually love creating content these days. I feel so connected to my audience and I’m excited to put out content that I think might resonate with you that might help you on your journey, make your day better. That excites me and I don’t want to rush through that process. I want to really savor in the connection to you. So I might drink some tea. I might put on music that I like. I love to have an essential oil that I just love the smell and it helps me to feel creative. And it becomes kind of a ritual that I really enjoy and look forward to each week. Who knew that content creation could be a ritual, right?
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I helped my client Joe to do this. You can hear his story on the podcast. He’s been on a couple of times now and when he first started working with me, he really didn’t like marketing or content creation either for some of the same reasons and then some reasons of his own and his schedule was very busy. And we really helped him to grow to like content creation as well where it does feel creative and it does feel in service of his audience and an opportunity to connect with his audience. And he has been showing up in a big way this year, taking out newspaper ads, consistently showing up on Instagram, writing e-mails consistently. He published a book. He’s done a lot of great things and the result of that is hitting his biggest revenue months more than once a year. He’s really steadily growing. And the last thing you can do for yourself is also to remember the wins. Your small wins, your big wins.
So maybe a small win is your visibility on your Instagram Reels starts reaching over a thousand for every Reel. I remember when that started happening for me, I was like, ooh, okay, I’m seeing progress. Or just having more people reach out to you consistently in the DMs or getting more referrals, signing more clients. Obviously that’s a bigger win. Bigger revenue months, a bigger win.
But remember the small wins. The small wins are the precursors to the big wins. And then remember your client successes, your client wins, small and big, because it is literal proof that your work is working and people need your help. And if it seems like your business growth or even your social media growth is just taking too long, just come back to all of this. And remember when you do show up consistently and you’re refining and evaluating and refining again, then it will continue to prove you’ll get more efficient, conversions will get better.
All these small wins will lead to bigger growth, higher revenue, the ability to help more people. So to summarize, focus on the potential client that you want to help today. And if you’re unable to really connect with them and you doubt if what you’re writing will help them or reach them or if it’s what they need to hear, just try it. Test your content.
Conclusion
Remember, the more content you get out there, the more data you’ll get to know what resonates with your people and what doesn’t. And if a post or an e-mail falls flat, doesn’t get the reaction or the results that you desire, it doesn’t mean anything against you. It doesn’t mean anything against your practitioner capabilities, your entrepreneurial capabilities. It just means that something needs to be and refined so that you can keep going.
And during that process, make sure to support yourself in the moment, honor what you’re feeling, understand what’s coming up. Is it imposter syndrome? Is it doubt? Is it people pleasing? Is it fear? What comes up for you and all that.
Make sure you have daily and weekly practices to reset your nervous system, to replenish, to re-energize, to fill your cup, especially if in the beginning, each day feels really exhausting and draining. And then remember your wins, remember your client wins, big and small. Take note of them. They’re all going to be the precursors for more.
All right, I hope this helps you to keep going on your journey. You’ve got this. I know you can do it.
All right, I’ll see you next week. Bye for now!
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