Mindset Blocks That Keep You From Being Successful
You can have the best strategy and still not book in paying clients. You can take all the courses and still not be successful in business. When you start your own business, you become your own boss and gain all the freedom, but now you are the driving force. Which means your business stands and falls with you and your mindset.
Let’s look at the most common mindset blocks typically happening when starting or scaling your business.
Shiny Objects Syndrome
The fantastic thing about starting your business is that choices are endless which can also be tricky at the same time. There are two common traps I see happening:
Either you see so many options that you don’t even know what kind of business you want to start; should you become a freelancer? Or a social media manager? Should you start as a virtual assistant? Graphic design? There are so many options, and you would love to do all of them, but now you feel paralysed and don’t do anything.
Sound familiar?
The other thing I see happening is that you start something and constantly change direction and therefore confuse your target audience.
Now let’s get something straight right away. If you don’t like doing something, I do think you should pivot. Just because you started as a social media manager doesn’t mean you have to do it for the rest of your life.
However, for anything to be successful, we need to stay consistent for a while. The ‘shiny object syndrome’ means that you get side-tracked with every new thing that’s out there.
When we first start out, we want to build our brand and make sure that people know who we are, what we do and how we serve them. Of course, we evolve as people and shift our focus and business goals, and that’s fine over time.
However, if you literally change your bio every single week and go from being a social media manager to designer and then to a health coach, it can confuse our audience. Furthermore, it takes time to build a strong brand with proven results.
Clients trust us most when they can see we’ve been getting results with our services.
Imposter Syndrome
Who are you to think you can offer social media management services? There are other people who know more than you. Ever had that little voice in your head telling you to not put yourself out there?
It’s not safe, and people might judge you!
The hard truth is: Yes, there might be people who will judge you, but I can guarantee you these won't be the ones who inspire you. Only ever take advice from someone who is already living a life that you aim for. So if Susan from the office thinks it’s weird that you started your own Instagram and took a social media manager course, think first if Susan has the life YOU are working towards? If not, move on and let Susan think her thing.
There will always be people who know more than you. Offering your services as a social media manager, VA or whatever you want to do doesn’t mean that you think you're better than anyone or know more than anyone. You never will, and no one does.
Here is the most important thing you need to remember. You only need to be two steps ahead of your client, not twenty. As long as you know more than your potential client, you can already serve them. Read that again.
Perfectionism
Always wanting to do everything perfectly is tricky because your ego might tell you that’s what makes you professional, but it’s actually holding you back.
Obviously, you still want to do a great job when you market yourself but trust me; no one will care if that story sounded a bit weird or if all your stories are “on brand”. The ones who are successful are not people who never made mistakes but took action. They put out their services or products even when they didn’t feel confident.
They might have written a caption with a typo, but they were putting themselves out there to get noticed.
You have the perfect Instagram bio yet? Start posting anyway!
You don’t have professional pictures for your accounts? Start with Reels; no photographer needed.
Don’t know what your brand name should be? Start with your first and last name, and if you want to change it further down the line, you can still do that!