Episode 216: Cultivating Courage To Go All In On Your Business

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | RSS

The idea of going all in on your design business can be scary, no matter what that looks like in your business. In today’s episode, we’re talking through how you can cultivate the courage to go all in. Listen in as I highlight where your fears originate from, how you can eliminate them, and why trusting yourself is so important.

What It Means to Go All In

Before we get into what going all in looks like for you, I first want you to acknowledge what your own definition of success looks like for you. Going all in looks different for everyone.

When you’re going all in, you’re going after a dream that matches the success you want. Don’t let someone else’s idea of success influence what it means to go all in for your business. Give yourself the permission to dream big, but ask yourself what you want. How does your business fit into your life?

Your business gives you the freedom to build the life that you want.

Is Fear Holding You Back?

The biggest thing that I hear from designers in regards to what’s holding them back is fear. There is always a but that is lead by fear. Doubt creeps in and it comes from fear.

Fear can be used as a tool. The goal here is to acknowledge fear and observe it without trying to let it influence you. If we look at it as something that is trying to bring you awareness, we can notice that it’s a tool and it teaches us what might happen. Fear is your brain trying to keep you safe.

The challenges we face in our design business are not something to truly be afraid of.

Your Fears Don’t Originate Within You

Oftentimes the fears we face in our business aren’t from within us. These fears have been placed on us by peers, mentors, parents, etc. They usually come from someone who doesn’t see the possibility of what bein an entrepreneur can look like.

This isn’t a fear that you told yourself. Fear is striving to keep us small, because when we stay small we stay safe

You do not have to stay small to be successful in your design business.

Eliminate Your Fears with Data

When we feel fear as a roadblock, we can shine a light on it by looking at the data. Take a look at the data, facts, and proof. Your emotions are drumming up the fear, where your data can back up your plans with truth.

If you’re looking to take a leap in your business, but are struck with fear, look at what you’ve already accomplished and how this could be successful for you When we look at the data, there is typically more proof of success than there is for doubt, fear, and failure.

Find a balance in your emotion and data, because your data can support you and eliminate that fear.

Trust Yourself

When you are thinking about going all in, you can trust yourself. When we’re making big moves in our businesses, it’s easy to get stuck on the strategy. You can build confidence and safety within yourself.

You may be focusing on the negative “what if’s”, but I want you to ask yourself:

What if….

• I go all in and win
• And take my business full time
• And hit the income goal
• And my life changes

Entertaining these ideas will allow you to see the best case scenario and when it happens, it’s because you went all in.

You have survived 100% of the challenges in your business.

FOLLOW ALONG

Brand Strategy Podcast

Instagram

Pinterest

Leave a Review!

LIKE THE SHOW?

IN ORDER TO PROVIDE CONTENT YOU LOVE I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! SUBSCRIBE TO THE BRAND STRATEGY PODCAST AND LEAVE A 5-STAR REVIEW HERE. THE MORE REVIEWS, THE MORE I’M ABLE TO PROVIDE THIS FREE-ACTIONABLE CONTENT!

Review the Transcript:

Hi friend, and welcome to the brand strategy podcast. A show created to equip you with the inspiration, encouragement, and clarity. You need to build a brand of your dreams. I’m your host, Bonnie Bahktiari, brand designer, and founder of The Illume Retreat from sustainable strategy to heartfelt encouragement. Each episode is designed to equip you with the tools you need to chase after your dreams, because you deserve a brand that empowers you to do what you love, connects with your dream clients and offers a deep sense of fulfillment along the way. So grab a cup of coffee and join me on, on this journey. Won’t you

Welcome to this. Month’s live where we are talking about how to cultivate the confidence to go all in on your design business. Now, whether you are planning on going all in, in your design business and to you that looks like taking your work full time or to you, it feels like going after the next income goal, that still feels exciting, but kind of scary. Or you’re wanting to pivot and introduce a new offering, right? All in that idea of going all in in your business can look different based on where you are and who you are and what matters to you. And so today’s live is focused on how to cultivate the confidence to go after that, whatever that looks like, because remember your definition of success might look different from someone else’s. That doesn’t mean that one is more worthy or more valuable than the other.

It simply means that we are different unique individual. And so what we’re pursuing and what we wanna build might look and feel different, all worthy, all beautiful and all 100% worth it. So in today’s live, we’re gonna talk through how to go after it. Now, if this is your first time joining me for one of these lives welcome, I’m so excited to have you hanging out with me here. If you are a proud, and this is not your first time joining me for one of these lives, then welcome back. My name is Bonnie and I am a coach for graphic brand and web designers. I’m on a mission to help designers break up with the fester famine cycle so that they can experience consistent income in their design businesses, reclaim their time, creativity and energy, and take intentional action to build the life of your dreams.

And I’m passionate about that because that’s exactly what I did for myself and it’s now, but I help hundreds of designers all over the world do, and here in this group, we’re gonna talk about one of those first steps to really take your business to the next level. And that is choosing to take action and choosing to go all in. So with all that being said, let’s dive on into what we’re talking about today, which is again, how to cultivate that confidence, how to take that next step in your business to really go all in. And when I say how to take that next step to really go all in one thing that I think is important to note is that when we’re going all in, we’re going all in on a dream that we have a vision that we have an idea of success that matters to us.

And that is powerful friend, because ultimately what I want you to feel empowered to pursue is not someone else’s definition of success. I don’t want you to chase after five figure months because you heard someone say, you need to be making five figure months. I don’t want you to be introducing passive income into your business. It just because some coach told you that that was the right thing to do. And I don’t want you to feel the pressure to take your business full time. If you’re not there yet. What I do want you to do is I want you to give yourself the permission and the space, especially this time of year, where so many of us are planning. So many of us are dreaming and we’re in that mode, in that mindset where we’re thinking about what the next year, what the next quarter, what that can look like.

And so what I want you to do is I want you to give yourself the permission to dream big and to go deep with that dream and ask yourself, what do I want for my design business? Not because I see other people posting about it on Instagram, not because it’s what I think I’m SU posts to want, but what do I actually want for my design business? How is this business that I’m building gonna fit into my life? And that’s what matters friend, because at the end of the day, these businesses give us the opportunity to experience so much fulfillment, so much creativity, and to have such an impact in the lives of our it’s. But also at the end of the day, they are a powerful way for us to be building the kind of life that we want and experience the quality of life that we want.

So whether you are dreaming about paying down debt, saving for vacation, planning for retirement, uh, you know, saving to, to send your kids to a different school and make a big move or to move in with your partner or to travel the world, whatever you’re doing, the income that your business can generate can help you change your life. And that’s why I’m passionate about sharing what I know with designers, just like you, so that you can claim that you can reach out and touch that and make it happen. And that’s exactly what I do in inside my program for designers, the brand strategy school, where I show designers, how to generate consistent income month after month using brand strategy, a done for you brand strategy process. I might, I add that’s done for you so that you can experience growth, right, where you are without the trial or error.

So today let’s talk about what it looks like to go all in and cultivate that confidence to take that step and go all in. So a lot of the time when I’m chatting with designers and I’m hearing that they’re wanting to take that next step. So let’s say they’re wanting to go full time, or they’re wanting to go after this like big, scary, amazing goal that they have. The biggest thing that I hear is fear, right? I hear so much fear around that next step that they wanna take. They’re really excited about what they wanna do. They’re sharing with me, Bonnie. This is where I go, and this is what I wanna do. And this is what it’s gonna look like and feel like, and how it’s gonna help change my life. But there’s always that, but right. But I dunno how to do it, but I don’t know if I can do it, but I don’t know what next step to take.

There’s a lot of doubt. And a lot of that doubt I have found comes from place of fear. Yes, absolutely. There have been points in my business where I was held back and I didn’t take that next step because I was afraid. I was afraid of failing. On the other hand, I was afraid of being more successful than I could manage. I was afraid of not failing, but succeeding more than I could handle, or you know, what, whatever that looks like to you, I can, you know, honestly say here I can be over here raising my hand and say that definitely there have been times in my business where fear held me back, which is why we’re, we’re putting it front and center in our conversation today, as one of the big things that we need to overcome, we need to face. We need to look at before we can go all in.

Now, when think about that, an important distinction to make is the goal here is to not ever feel fear. The goal is to never be afraid. That’s not the goal. The goal is to acknowledge when we’re experiencing fear around growing our businesses and look at the fear and observe it without judging, without trying to analyze, without trying to figure it out, just look at it and kind of think to yourself. Hmm. That’s interesting fear. Where did you come from? Why did you come to the party who brought you, who invited you? And if we look at our fear in that way, and we look at it as something that is, uh, trying to bring you awareness around what might happen if you take this next step, we actually can notice that fear is a tool. Fear is, is a good thing that we experience because it teaches us.

It shows us what might happen, right? It’s trying to keep you safe, essentially when we’re experiencing fear, that’s your brain trying to keep you safe because it doesn’t want you to fail. It doesn’t want you to put yourself in a scar or intimidating situation. But what we have to remember is that where we are now and the challenges that we face now, especially with growing our design businesses, they’re not something to be truly afraid of. They are something to, to be aware of and to go with our eyes wide open, but it’s not something that we need to be paralyzed by a lot of the time when you’re experiencing fear. What I encourage people to do is look at that and say, where did I hear this? Where did this fear come from? Is this a fear that originated 100% within me? Or is this a fear that I’m thinking of right now that I’m experiencing?

Because my parents or my teachers or my, my, uh, professors or my coaches or my friends, right? Are they the people that instill that fear in you? Are they people that told you it’s hard to be an artist? It’s not, it’s not productive. It’s not safe to be a designer going out there and building your business right. Going out and not having the traditional nine to five write. That’s scary. So many designers that I work with, especially those inside the brand strategy school. I hear that fear come up a lot. And it’s never a fear that they, that they put on themselves. It’s never a fear that originated from within them. It’s a fear that came from someone in their life who didn’t see the possibility. And didn’t see the power that can come with owning your own business and, and having that kind of freedom and having that kind of control.

So when we look at fear, we ask, where did I hear this? And then we take, get one step further. And we name where that fear originated from. And we say, who told me this? And nine times out of 10, when we go through this practice, we actually find that this is a fear that did not originate within you. And this is not a fear that you told yourself, this is a fear that someone else put a on you. And because your brain is trying to keep you safe, it’s coming up when you’re wanting to take that next step in your design business, when you’re wanting to go full time, or when you’re wanting to chase after that big, bright income goal, it’s coming from that place, but it’s not originating from within you. And I think that’s a really important distinction to make. That’s a really importance lesson for us to learn, because when we look at that and we see, oh, okay, this actually is a fear.

That’s not genuine to me. It’s not 100% something that came from me. We can find that it’s a story that it’s been, that we’ve been carrying around. And it’s a story that actually is striving to keep us small, because there’s a part of us. It’s thinking if we stay small, then we stay safe. And yeah, maybe that has served you well up until this point in your life. But here’s, here’s the mindset shift that I wanna challenge you to make. You do not have to stay small in order to be successful in your design business or in your life. In fact, how powerful, how profitable impactful could you be if you stepped into all of the bigness, all of the space, all of the expansiveness that you have within you, if you owned that and you showed up as that version of yourself inside your design business, something to think about friend.

So when we’re feeling that fear, when we look at that, and we’re feeling that fear as a roadblock between where you are now and the goal that you wanna be pursuing again, we wanna ask ourselves, where did this come from? And armed with that information of where that fear came from. We want to do something. We wanna shine a light on it that makes it even more challenging for that fear to exist. And that flashlight, that light, that we’re shining is in the form of data. When you’re wanting to take that next step in your business, look at the data, look at the facts and look at the proof because the proof is going to help you differentiate between what is, what is drama, what’s the drama that your emotions or your fears or your self-doubt is drumming up in your mind versus what is actually true?

What is provable and what is kind of the cold, hard facts. So look at the data that you have to back yourself up, and this can look different based on what kind of goal you wanna go after. But let’s say you’re wanting to take your business full time. You’re wanting to break up with your nine to five, and you’re wanting to go full time in your design business, but you’re feeling afraid to take that leap because you’re thinking, oh, well, I don’t have this massive roster of clients lined up and waiting for me when I take that leap. I want you look at the data and say, okay, yes, I might not have those clients lined up yet, but what clients have I worked with? What transformations have I provided through my design work? And how can I go all in and do that again so that I can start to create that space and build that freedom for me to put it in my two weeks notice and leave this corporate position.

When we look at the data. So often we find that there’s much more, that supports that you can do this versus not enough to support that you can do it. So when you think about, especially when I’m chatting with designers who are in there for, I’d say probably year, maybe two years in one, one struggle that I hear a lot is thinking that I don’t have enough clients, or I haven’t had enough clients to raise my rates to go all in on this to X, Y, and Z. And actually what we do. If we take a look at the data and we look at the number of clients that they’ve worked with, because remember you are your own client and a lot of cases, you’re your own best client, the transformation that you’ve created for yourself, the brand, the website, the graphics that you’ve created for yourself are incredible.

And that is absolutely something that you deserve to put on your port, fol you page, and you get to share, and you get to internally own that and feel that confidence that comes from, oh, yeah, I, I do know what I’m doing, cuz I’ve done this for myself. I’ve walked myself through this process before. So when we look at the data, we often can find that there’s more to support that we’re capable, that we can do this and what we is making it seem like that wasn’t the case was the drama that fear or insecurity or self-doubt was, was kind of drumming up in our minds. And I can speak from so much experience over the years. There are so many times where I’ve listened to the drama and not the data. But so often when I look at the data, I find that actually I’m closer to achieving my goal than I was telling myself, or I am so much more likely to experience this kind of growth than I thought I was.

Right. We wanna look at data, not that we wanna ignore at ocean, not that emotion doesn’t matter, but we wanna balance it. We want to acknowledge it while then grounding ourselves in the facts and the figures and the analytics and the data that we can look at that will help us strategically determine how we can best move forward. So an example of this is if you’re telling yourself I wanna raise my pride is next year, but I don’t think that I have enough. I offer enough value or I don’t think that I have enough clients under my belt, go back and look at the year that you’ve had look at the testimonials that your clients have shared with. You look at the number of projects you’ve successfully booked. And I can almost G T that the incredible feedback that you’ve received from your clients will tell you will just prove again and again and again, the quality of the transformation that you are creating and that you are offering through your work as a designer.

And when we find that year after year, we are providing a level of service that delivers a layer and powerful transformation. Absolutely. You deserve to raise those rates. Absolutely. You have the leverage to do that because your work is already converting and showing up at the level that you want it to. Right? So we wanna just continue to make sure that you’re getting compensated accordingly, right? But the drama tell us, oh no, we can’t do that. That’s scary. But the data tells us no, you’re right on track. Keep going, make this next move. So from their friend, I wanna bring it home with one additional piece of advice and encouragement. When you’re thinking about going all in, in your design business, whatever that looks like, and it is to the truth. It is the truth that you can trust yourself when we are making big moves and our businesses.

It’s so easy for us to get stuck and fixated on the strategy, on the practical, on the, how to, and the workflows and the tools, right. I speak from experience. And I see so many of my students over the years, wrestling with that as well. It can be, it can be comfortable to look at the strategy and the how to, and all of those practical things, but what we forget and what I’m not quite sure that our industry focuses on enough is cultivating that inner confidence, cultivating that connection to yourself and to your abilities and to your intellect and your tenaciousness and your diligence. And I could like, I could go on and on and on, but I think you’re getting the point and that is that you are safe with yourself. You can trust yourself. So when you’re setting a goal in your design business and you are wanting to take that next step, whatever that looks like to you, and you’re thinking, oh, what if, what if, and you’re kind of running through all the, all the fear based scenarios.

I want you to run one more scenario. And this is something that maybe if you’re not quite there yet just approach it from a standpoint of play with it and look at it from a standpoint of what if, but ask yourself, what if I go all in and I win? What if I go all in? And I take my business full time? What if I go all in? And I hit that income goal? What if I go all in? And my life changes, right? If you, if you look at that, if you think about that, if you entertain that idea, one thing that I hope you’ll notice is that, that best case scenario, that winning scenario, that scenario, that points you towards your definition of success, that happened because you went all in and you believed in yourself and you took action, knowing that you, you can trust yourself, right?

You have survived 100% of the challenges that you have faced to get to this point in your business, you have survived 100% of these struggles and the bad days and the challenges that you might not have thought you could. There’s so many times when I look back on my own journey and I am amazed by the fact that there are so many times where I took the leap and I didn’t know where my feet would land, but I landed anyway. And if I can do that, oh my gosh. So can you, you are so capable. You are so wildly capable of going all in and making year. The year that you believe in yourself, the year that you take action armed with that truth and the year that you are cultivating that sense of self trust, knowing that you can absolutely create and launch and grow the design business of your dreams because you are the one in charge and you are the one who’s taking action.

And if you have brought yourself this far, if you are in this group, you’re in this group because you have a vision and you are believing that you can make that vision happen. Maybe even if it’s just a teeny, tiny little flicker of belief within. And so friend, I wanna you today, when you’re taking a look at your goals for the coming year, and you’re thinking about how you wanna grow and what that action can look like. I want you to remember that fear does not need to sit in the driver’s seat. I want you to remember that data is actually your new best friend and more than anything, if you actually only remember one thing from today’s live, I want it to be that you can trust yourself 100%. You can trust yourself. So, friend, I hope that today’s live has been encouraging. I hope that you’re walking away with a little extra pep in your step, feeling conf that and your ability to go all in on yourself and your business in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Friends, before you go, I would be so grateful to receive your feedback on the brand strategy podcast. If you enjoyed this episode or the podcast in general has helped you grow your brand. I’d really appreciate if you left us a review in iTunes, your positive reviews enable the brand strategy podcast to continue to grow and reach like-minded creatives. Just like you thanking for all your support and encouragement as together. We pursue building brands with purpose and intention until next time and cheering you on from Waco.