Stop trying to fit in and build a business that feels like you!

I started looking for a business retreat or in a conference or something. I wanted to put myself in a smarter room, so I was looking for people who had achieved what I considered at the time to be greater levels of success. And I found this retreat that seemed to be perfect for what I was looking for.

As I said a moment ago, I was aggressively seeking success. And honestly, I had some blinders on because I was so laser focused in on trying to prove something to the world around me. I didn't even know who I was trying to prove it to, but I was focused on proving something. And with blinders were so securely in place that I signed up for this event not knowing anything about it.

I knew who the host was. He was an author that I have followed and that I honestly really enjoy. And I like his direct, no nonsense approach, although he's a little rough around the edges for some people. I knew it was going to be in Dallas, which was kind of perfect because my best friend Crystal, lives in Dallas. And that's all I knew.

I did not know the location in Dallas.

I did not know the agenda.

I did not know who would be appearing as a guest speaker or what type of activities we would be doing.

I didn't know anything. And I signed up.

Like I said, my blinders were securely in place. And I thought, here's a smarter room. Here are smarter people. They know better than me. They are going to help me achieve this new level of success.

I found a smarter room and felt like a big dummy!

As I was settling into the first morning of this event, I'm looking around the room and I began to realize that I was really intimidated, honestly, and a little bit afraid. Now, I am typically a pretty confident person and I'm very comfortable speaking to groups, to people, to meeting new people. I thrive in that kind of environment.

But here I was, sitting in a room with people whose books I had purchased and studied, whose programs I had bought and taken to build my own business, whose businesses I had watched, paid attention to, studied, and admired. I honestly believed that I had just stepped into a smarter room and that I was the dumbest person there. It was incredibly intimidating.

I started wondering, what in the heck am I doing here? Why did I come to this event? But I had invested my money, I had traveled, and I had blocked the time off to participate in this event. So I thought, okay, I'm going to sit here, see what I can get out of this event, and see what I can do.

As I sat in that room listening to the guest speakers and hearing the other participants share, I really tried to put myself in that position. I started seeing myself as one of them, which on the surface sounds like a great thing. Oh, you see yourself as a more successful person. You see yourself as somebody higher, at an upper level, or whatever the case may be.

But honestly, that was a lie I was telling myself. 

While these people were incredibly successful, they were also incredibly nice, generous, kind, very giving of their expertise and knowledge, and very welcoming to me. I was forgetting one thing that I have shared with you and that I want you all to do. I was not claiming my own success just because they had more visibility in the online world than I did.

I assumed that they were a bigger success than me. I wasn’t looking at what I had accomplished. I wasn’t seeing that I had just grown my business by an incredible amount while going through cancer and a global pandemic. I didn’t see that I had clients who valued and appreciated me enough to refer me and help continue building my business.

I didn’t see that I was delivering something really incredible and amazing to the people I was meant to serve. I only saw that I was not like these people I admired and that I was believing I was not enough. I thought I needed to change and follow a new path to be like them.

It just so happened that there was a person at the event who, while not as well-known as some of the other attendees, had developed a highly successful web design business model very similar to my own. He was so kind and generous with his time. He sat down with me and showed me how he had up-leveled his business to where he was living his dream life and gave me the blueprint. I mean, he told me every step he took to take his business to the next level.

And I walked away from that event feeling so inspired and convinced that I needed to follow this path. I mean, it was literally handed to me for free. The guy was very kind and generous, and why would I look a gift horse in the mouth? So, walking away from that event, I decided that I was going to step away from presenting myself as a solo entrepreneur and instead present myself as a marketing agency.

I was toying with the idea of actually developing and building a full agency, bringing in full-time staff members. On paper, everything seemed like the perfect next step. Like I said, I had this blueprint of how to do things. I had resources, and he was very generous and kind with his time and willing to be there for me as I built, grew, shifted, and changed my business.

So, I thought I had this amazing opportunity to grow my business to the next level. But here is where I went wrong. As I said before, I was 100% aggressively seeking growth and trying to prove something.

I was all in my head. I was not listening to my heart.

I was not following my own advice. And the advice I’m talking about is advice I give to myself, my kids, my clients—to everyone.

It’s simply this: do not take advice from someone who isn’t living the life that you dream about.

This person who gave me his blueprint is living an incredible life, and I’m so happy for him and his family. He has everything he wanted in life at that time and was striving for new levels of success. But he wasn’t living the life that I dream of.

His life—how he lives, how he spends his days—is so very different from what I want to be. He was striving to create an agency that ran itself so he could spend more time at home with his young children and not have to work so hard.

I love working. I love meeting with my clients. I love building new relationships with them. I love coming up with the designs and marketing plans. Why was I trying to create a business that put me on the outside of it? It made no sense. But yet, I wasn’t listening to my heart or taking my own advice.

I was convinced I needed to do this. I went through a whole rebrand and began positioning myself as an agency. Behind the scenes, I started researching how to grow my team and bring in the right people so I could work less and build this dream that had been laid out for me.

At first things were good... so I thought!

I’ll admit, initially, I thought I had done something good. When I launched the new brand, when I launched the new agency model, there were a lot of people who stepped up and were excited for me. A lot of people recognized that I was a success, and I thought, “Okay, I just proved myself right.”I was so excited because I had set out to prove something, and I felt like I had succeeded. I was on a new level of success. 

World, look at me and give me credit.

It looked good initially, but it didn’t take long for me to start realizing—and to start hearing what my heart had to say—that things just weren’t quite right. Yes, it looked good on paper. Yes, I felt like I had accomplished something and proved something to the world. But the world didn’t need me to prove anything. It wasn’t me. Not the genuine me.

I wasn’t in alignment with my personal values. I’ve built my business on my own personal values. And these values are not just my business values, but my life values as well. And one of them is being authentic. I want you to always see the real me. Whether we connect through this podcast, through social media, you decide to hop on a consult with me, or I meet you in the grocery store and discuss cantaloupes with you. Whatever the case is, wherever I meet you, I want you to know the real me and always see the real me.

I wasn't being the REAL me

Presenting myself as an agency was so inauthentic to who I was, who I wanted to be, and the business that I wanted to grow. I was 100% out of alignment. Well, maybe not 100%, but I was out of alignment with my own personal core values. And as a result of that, I began to shrivel a little bit.

I started to lose my voice.
I lost a lot of my confidence.
I didn’t feel like I knew how to speak about myself or my business
I forgot ho to connect with the people that I really wanted to serve.

I felt like I was just lost in a sea of something that was not me, for lack of a better word.

I realized that I had to pivot. I had to turn and undo the things that I had done. 

I had to turn in a new direction, and I had to get back on the right path and the road that was 100% me. That’s what I did. I let go of that agency model and returned to being the solo entrepreneur that I love to be. I love sharing who I am genuinely. I love doing the work that I do. I don’t need somebody to do the work for me. I want to do it myself. I want the sense of accomplishment at the end of the day that I have shown up and served the people that I am meant to serve in a really amazing way, and that’s who I am now.

Here’s the really cool thing that has happened since making that shift back to positioning myself as the solo entrepreneur that I love being. First of all, I found my voice again. I had not even realized how much I was hiding from the world because I didn’t feel like I had a genuine, authentic voice anymore. I really was hiding in a very big way. I also started feeling confident again in who I am as a business, who I am as a person, and who I am just in general. I found my confidence and reclaimed that.

I also remembered the value that I get from building real, genuine relationships with the clients that I have. They come to me because of who I am, genuinely, because I am that solo entrepreneur. Because I know what it’s like to be on my own. Because I know what it’s like to struggle and to deal with the loneliness, the doubts, the impostor syndrome, and all of the things that come with being a solo entrepreneur. I remembered all of that. And finally, I remembered that my success can only be defined by me.

Yes, this person and this retreat that I went to, they shared some incredible inspiration. They were kind and generous, and they want me to succeed. They also want me to succeed on my own terms. They never wanted me to mold myself into something different. They wanted me to be me. And I forgot that when I was there.

As we wrap things up, there are three key takeaways I want to share again.

First off, stay true to yourself. Yes, there are going to be people out there you see who you believe have achieved a higher level of success. But if their success doesn’t feel quite right, it’s not the path for you. Don’t feel like you have to follow them or do what others do to find your own success. Carve your own path, because that is where your success lies.

Secondly, show up where your people are and focus your energy on the places where your dream clients are hanging out. I, as an agency, was trying to show up in different ways and places, and my people were not there. Even when I did show up where my people were, they didn’t hear what I was sharing because it wasn’t their message. Show up where your people are and talk directly to them. Don’t try to be somebody you’re not.

Finally, alignment is everything. When you are genuine and authentic to who you really are and what you want to put out into the world, you are naturally going to attract the clients and the opportunities meant for you. You don’t have to prove anything to anybody. You don’t have to exhaustively search for something new. Be who you are, and things will show up when they’re meant to.

Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of The Solo Grind. I hope it’s given you a little food for thought and is helping you take things to the level of success that you’re meant to have. If you want to chat with me about new levels of success, pivoting, or anything else, I’d love to hear from you. My contact information is in the show notes, so it’s easy to connect.

Next week

I have a guest! This is my good friend, my colleague, my business coach, Nancy Ganzekaufer. Nancy is going to talk to us about profitability. Let me tell you this—if you do not have the level of profitability you’re striving for, or you’re not running a profitable business, you have got to tune in to next week’s episode. Nancy is brilliant when it comes to helping you position yourself, price yourself, and start bringing in the work you are meant to do.

Until we meet again, my friends, stay true to your vision and remember—your success can only be defined by you. I believe in you.