From Self-Doubt to Self-Assured: A Pathway to Business Mastery

We’ve all been in moments where we question our own ideas or capabilities. Heck, even the most successful entrepreneurs openly talk about experiencing impostor syndrome.

The question is, how much of your time is sneakily stolen by doubt or worry?

If you find yourself in seasons where you can’t seem to make progress, chances are it’s far more than you think.

In today’s conversation, I’ll share with you exactly how I navigate those moments and build what I call, your Belief Bank Account.

You’ll also hear the one thing that has served as a catalyst and has contributed to my consistent success in life and business. I’ll give you a little pep talk and maybe some much needed kick in the tush to help you move forward despite uncertainty.

So get comfy, grab a coffee or cocktail and get ready to get a confidence boost!

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• What typically most experts online do when things didn’t go as planned aka they launched and had zero sales (and why you shouldn’t be doing this!)
• The real reason behind why you’re really not getting the sales you want
• What happens when we spin in cycle of self-doubt
• Funding and managing your Belief Bank Account
• My catalyst for success both in business and in personal life
• 4 things to do to beat self-doubt and start seeing momentum in your business

EPISODE  SHOW NOTES👇

https://heathersager.com/episode201/

Chapters

• 0:00 Creating a Platform for Yourself
• 12:31 Believing in Yourself and Marketing
• 17:30 Belief, Resilience, and Failing Forward
• 23:29 Belief and Action in Business
• 30:45 Building Self-Confidence in Business
• 37:19 Overcoming Self-Doubt and Building Business Skills

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The struggle with those who spend their time self-doubting is you're taking withdrawals out of that Belief Bank account And if you are struggling with your confidence, if you are struggling with making decisions and moving forward, i would bet that your Belief Bank account is overdrawn. This is the podcast for the entrepreneur who wants to make a big impact, who doesn't shy away from hard work but also wants to enjoy life along the way. Hi, i'm Heather Sager, former executive-turned-entrepreneur, and I've spent the last 20 years working with premium brands on sales, marketing and communication, and I've learned that when you become a magnet with your message, you only need a hint of hustle to achieve your goals. Get ready to be inspired and ignited each week with tangible strategies on sales, speaking, marketing and so much more. This is the Hint of Hustle podcast. Let's go Well. Hey friend, welcome back to another episode of Hint of Hustle.

Speaker 1: 1:28

I just got back from another one of my mid-morning walks And, just like last week, i just knew I don't know if you do this, i've been doing silent walks lately And the topic that I had planned to record when I got home today I just had a curveball thought feeling brain download of a completely new episode, which is what we're going to talk about today, And every time I do these episodes for something's on my mind that I just need to share it with you. These are always the best episodes. So, in advance, you're welcome, because I know today it's going to be exactly what you need to hear going into the summer, but also just this phase of where you are right now in your business. You need to hear this episode. I will record the one that I had planned to do That'll come later But I think that's one of the things sometimes as business owners is, sometimes we got a trust or cut and just know that if there's something really important that you want to share, that is a powerful thing. And when you know your audience, when you know the person you're speaking to, when you know what their challenges are and how they might be feeling, and you align that with like a big idea that you want to share, those two things come together, i think, really really well. So I'm excited. I hope you are excited too. I got really good feedback after last week's episode. If you missed it, that is going to be one you'll want to tune into. So that would be a great follow up for this.

Speaker 1: 3:00

I've been getting a lot of messages on Instagram lately from strangers It's always the funny way that I term it of people that I don't know in my own social circle, or people that I don't have ever met before, or they're not a friend of a friend. Strangers are finding the show online. Many thanks to you for so generously sharing it with others, and it's really fun to hear from people who are listening to the show. Maybe that's you, maybe you're new to listening to the show. I just I'm a little, i'm just in awe and I'm so, so grateful. It still surprises me that people listen to me. Yeah, murr, i don't know if you ever have those thoughts either, but it's just I don't know.

Speaker 1: 3:47

I just had this moment earlier. I was thinking about the world we live in right now, how incredible it is that we have such access to connect with so many people. So it's access to so many podcasts and online resources, and sure that comes with. There's a lot of crap too, right, there's a lot of negativity online. I get that, but I choose to focus on oh, my goodness, like I can learn pretty much anything by going to YouTube or listening to podcasts. If I'm in a funk, i can turn on an audio book or something to just help me get reconnected. I just I think it's really fricking powerful.

Speaker 1: 4:29

I was joking with some friends over the weekend. We went over to our dear friends, james and I. It was his best friend from years ago that he lived with him and I met him and his wife. We went over to their new house over the weekend and we were chatting about how different the dating world is now versus when we all met and got married. And the big difference that we talked about was now, in today's world, access to social media and you could research people and you actually can create a picture around what's possible for you and kind of what the dating pool is and what life could be like. And, just side note, i also had the thought of oh my gosh, like I kudos to you if you're dating in the online world. I don't know, i don't know how, i don't even know how to do that.

Speaker 1: 5:18

Anyways, i'm digressing here on the topic, but coming back to it, i think it's pretty powerful that we have access to the internet and I'm choosing to view this connection and this ability to create my own stage and grab this microphone every single week. I think it's really, really powerful and I hope that if you feel so called to do the same, that regardless of what size your audience is, regardless of what it is you want to talk about, i hope that you have the courage to take action and start doing it. Even if no one else shows up at first, even if you're not exactly sure what that looks like, i think creating a platform for yourself. It's well-threatened therapeutic for yourself. I think it's also very clarifying to start fumbling through your message and figuring out what you have to say and how you want to say it. I just think we live in a time where this is just really, really incredible. So if you feel called to create your own stage whether it's a podcast or just showing up in your Instagram stories or going live on social media don't worry about what the quote unquote best way to do it is. This is just about getting started and showing up and starting to figure out what you like and sharing the message that you want to share. And the other things can come, they can come in later. Just get started before you try to get fancy and get it right because, friend, you're not going to get it right out of the gate. You probably already learned that lesson by now. So, ok, i did want to share with you one other quick personal update before we jump in to today's topic.

Speaker 1: 6:53

Officially, so y'all know I've been in the process of moving And by moving we're selling our house right now. So we're on week three of the house being open. We haven't had any offers yet. I've got a mini ask for that But we've had a couple open houses and it's showing very, very well And in our market selling is usually taking about I don't know 20 to 45 days to go under contract. So not worried by any means. I'm excited for an offer to come in. But that's kind of this big thing. We're moving across the state to Bend, oregon. We live just outside of Portland right now And we're really excited. It's really really big life change that I am so freaking excited about And I'll take you on this journey. But there's another big life change that is happening in the Sager House that I haven't yet told you about, and that is we are expecting Baby Sager number three, which is wild.

Speaker 1: 7:50

Yes, i am pregnant. It surprises a lot of people. They usually follow up with the question of oh my gosh, was that on purpose And yes, it was on purpose. However, there's a really funny story around it And I'll share that another day. But we are thrilled. We are due the week after Thanksgiving, so at the time this episode airs I'll be about 15 weeks And so far it's been a healthy pregnancy.

Speaker 1: 8:15

I'm feeling great, but I'm tired AF. It's been as I've talked about on previous episodes. We are in a very heavy season, a heavy season of a lot of different things happening And I've been pregnant this entire time through the Signature Doc accelerator. I got pregnant after the launch of that program But before I taught the three days I'm pregnant through travels. I had morning sickness throwing my way up through Arizona and Sedona, which I talked about with a trip a couple of months ago Month ago, i don't know a month and a half ago, anyway. So that's an exciting thing. I'm thrilled to finally be able to share the news, not that I didn't want to share it earlier, but I just honestly. There's been a lot of things going on. So, cats in the bag, there's a baby in my belly And, don't worry, i'm not going to be one of those people that just makes all my content about being pregnant, but it is definitely part of my journey right now, and when I think about the purpose of the show around hint of hustle, putting my full ass into the business and the areas that I want to, and then also creating space and freedom and flexibility in my life y'all, i'm gearing up for a really big change.

Speaker 1: 9:28

We are getting ready to send our youngest right now to kindergarten. So we just officially made our last daycare payment two weeks ago and bugle up Another is going to be a baby at home And we're going to be living across the state away from family, which means I'm going to be home with a baby And I've never stayed home with my kids. I've always had daycare at three to four months for my children. So I'm excited about this new chapter, but it does mean that I'm going to have to be really specific around where I spend my time and energy. So I'm actually really freaking stoked over the next 12 months to figure out what this means to my new normal, how I'm able to become even more efficient, simplify my business even more, to make a bigger impact without filling my days with a lot of calls and a lot of busy work. I'm really going to be exemplifying what it looks like to live this hint of hustle lifestyle, because I definitely want to still work And I'm definitely still running the Signature, talk Accelerator and some of these other programs that I have going on. So, anyways, be with me on the journey. I already started mapping out what that looks like. So some more to come, but I'm thrilled to finally be able to share that with you.

Speaker 1: 10:49

All right, let's dive into the thing that I wanted to talk to you about today, now that I've yammered on for I don't know how long, but I felt like all relevant and important, but the topic that we need to hit on today, it just came to me, as I said, when I was on my walk this morning, and this stems from a couple different things. So over the weekend I was scrolling on Facebook. An evening I was in bed eating popcorn and scrolling through Facebook And I had a little heartbreaking moment where, in one of the groups I'm in, i had saw somebody post that they were trying to launch a digital course And they tried to pre-sell it And they only got a few buyers in their pre-sale. So they were feeling super disappointed. So they moved forward and they tried to launch it again and only got another couple sales And they were having this thing, this moment where they were disappointed. They refunded the people and then their statement essentially was I'm so frustrated, i worked so hard on getting this together and now I have to go back and recreate the course It looks like I need to like. It's not what people want. I need more quality. And my heart broke a bit because, while this was one example, i have read so many of these almost to a T, exact same posts in groups that I've been in over the last five years, and what breaks my heart about it was the focus, the next steps, of going back to the drawing board. Wow, that was hard, evidently, for me to get out.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Going back to the drawing board to fix the program is typically what I see most experts do. When shit doesn't go how they planned in their head, when they don't have a launch, when they don't have sales, the natural instinct is oh my gosh, the thing that I built is terrible. I have to go back and I have to make something better, and I'm going to tell you, hands down, i would say nine out of 10 times. It's not an issue that the thing that you built was terrible, it's the marketing around it, it's the way that you sold it, it's the messaging and how you presented it. That was the problem, and this is the challenge that most experts online have is that we want it to be a sure thing. We want our work to speak for itself. We want the quality of our stuff to be so good that it just sells. But, my friend, that's not how it works. If it were about the best products or the most quality whatever items on the market, if those were the things that performed the best, we would live in a very different environment. With products today, in general, it is not the best products, it is not the highest quality products that outperform. It's the ones who know how to market.

Speaker 1: 14:00

And the struggle is, the perception around marketing is, quite frankly, negative. We associate, even though we know, logically speaking, that we have to market our businesses, for some reason we associate marketing with a schmucky thing. We associate marketing as convincing other people that they need something that we don't have or that they don't need. Convincing them that they need something they don't actually need And it's what we have. Wow, that was really See even I have word problems too, sometimes, but let me say it again convincing other people. They need something that they don't actually.

Speaker 1: 14:40

And that comes from when we have impulse, like dumb purchases on the $3 islet target, or we find ourselves buying something at 11pm at night off the home shopping network that we don't need but for some reason feel like we have to have it because it's such a good deal. We associate poor purchase decisions that we've had. They're impulse decisions. We think, oh my gosh, we never want to be wrapped up with that, so we don't. And so we go back to the focus of, okay, the thing we're selling. It just needs to be better. That's kind of concept number one that I want you to think about today. Are you hiding behind the quality of your product as your excuse for not talking about it and selling more? But I think this is actually a bigger problem And I think there is one thing this is what came to me in my walk today.

Speaker 1: 15:30

If I had to boil down my success into one specific thing and I hate it I hate it Delta status. I hate it when people freaking, oversimplify things because it's not just one thing. But if I had to say the one thing that was the catalyst for my success, not just in my business, but in my life. In my life, from a teenager into going through my 20s, competing in the Miss America program, climbing the corporate ladder at my last job into an executive role, traveling the world. Speaking now in my business, yes, i have done a lot And I would say, by all measures, i've been extremely successful.

Speaker 1: 16:08

The number one thing that has contributed to my consistent upward success in my life in my life and in business it's this I believe in myself more than I doubt myself. I believe in myself more than I doubt myself. The thing that just breaks my freaking heart, with so many of my clients that I work with if you're listening, i see you and I want you to hear me right now But also people that I haven't had a chance to work with, the thing that is constant is the volume of self-doubt, the volume of questioning could this work for me? or is my stuff good enough, or am I good enough? Or oh, i'm just not cut out for this, or oh, my course sucks, or I'm never going to make it, or I don't know what marketing to do, or I don't know what this to do, or I don't know, i don't know, i don't know, i don't know, i don't know isn't a bad thing, but when we're unwilling to figure it out, when we're unwilling to believe that we can figure it out, that's where shit goes sideways. Because what happens is when we're in the self-doubt bubble, self-doubt around oh it's not working for me, why is it not working for me? Or oh, i have to go back and I have to fix this, or I did it wrong, or being in fear, i don't want to get it wrong, so therefore I do nothing.

Speaker 1: 17:30

When we spin in that cycle of doubt, in that cycle of I don't know, in that cycle of uncertainty, we cannot focus on our progress and our success. It's like a completely different audio track. It like you. Just you can't, it just doesn't work that way. So the thing that I've done really well, the thing that I see so many successful entrepreneurs and successes, is not just one set definition right. Success is appreciating the growth and the wealth and the life that you've created in your business. You have to be satisfied with your progress. That, to me, is really true. Success is that you're actually happy with the progress that you're making. But there's a difference between spending your time doubting yourself and knowing that you've got this Now, when I say that I spend my time with more self-belief than I do self-doubt. It doesn't mean that I don't doubt myself. I sure as hell have moments where I'm like, oh my gosh, what is happening? or why on earth did I do that? or ugh. It just means I spend more time focusing on believing that I've got this.

Speaker 1: 18:49

Now here's the interesting thing. Have you ever heard that expression? This is like a real powerful quote somewhere on Pinterest or social media, and it's this you've survived 100% of your worst days. You've survived 100% of your worst days. Let's put this in perspective here. I think we've survived 100% of our most fearful moments. We've survived 100% of your most frustrating moment. You've survived 100% of your failures. You've survived 100% of your biggest flops, biggest mistakes, biggest embarrassing moments, everything that has happened that has been negative in your life. You've still survived it. You've survived 100% of your worst days. I want you to think about that Your ability to be resilient, to wake back up tomorrow, to figure out how to move forward. Even after life's most catastrophic events. you still have survived.

Speaker 1: 19:52

So the thing is, i think we get it wrong sometimes where we think that belief, that self-confidence has to come from a knowing that everything is going to be perfect. And that's not what self-confidence comes from. It's just knowing that ultimately it will be okay, knowing that ultimately you will figure a way through. Now I think the hard part we have and this is where self-doubt comes in is when you have a measure of success for yourself and you're not tracking to the exact timeline that you had wanted. that's when we start self-doubting. That's when we start getting frustrated. That's when we start saying why is it not happening for me? Why is this not working? Why can't I figure it out? It must be me, It must be. My content's not good enough. I need to go figure out a better product. I need to switch my strategy and try paid launches versus free launches. And we start cycling into why I need more ideas. I need more ideas and more ideas. And what you don't need? more ideas. You need more fricking discipline to execute on the ideas. You need more resilience to fricking, fail and learn from it. You see, i think, the difference between people who spend their time self-doubting versus those who sit on the side at the end of the day, they believe in themselves what the difference is? those on the doubt side spend their time worrying about failing Those of us on the side of we just believe that we'll figure it out. We spend our time failing. Yeah, i said that We spend our time failing because we see them as testing, we see it as learning, we see it as moving forward.

Speaker 1: 21:35

One of my favorite books is called Failing Forward by John Maxwell. I read it a couple of years ago. I actually talked about it on the podcast too. Failing Forward It's a way of being, i think, when you struggle with this, needing to match the picture in your head, friend, that is not having vision, that is not having high belief. That is a little bit of a delusion, thinking that life works out the way that we want it to, but it never does. But also, life could be so much more beautiful if you allow it to happen, if you believe in yourself and your ability to figure it out. Now I've used this quote before. I love this quote from Kerry Washington. I don't remember exactly how it goes, but she was in an interview. This video is floating around Instagram and TikTok.

Speaker 1: 22:24

She talks about how this interview is that if, let's say, you're running late for work and you have to take the bus and down the road is the bus stop and you're running late and you're like oh my gosh, i got to make it to the bus. She's like you can't just pray for the bus, you can't just pray that you're going to make it to the bus. You sure as hell better start running. Because if you just stand there and pray, if you miss the bus, well, that's your own damn fault Because, like, of course, you're not going to make it to the bus. But if you pray and you run, your likelihood of making it when you get there and you ran there, if you didn't make the bus then you can say well, that just wasn't my bus. Conversely, if you run but you don't pray and you make it there, right, but then you go, oh, dang it. Like then you blame yourself. She's just kind of. This really beautiful thing is you can't pray without action and you can't have action without prayer And prayer, whether your version of that is I'm not a religious person but my version of that is that self-belief, knowing that there's something bigger, knowing that something's going to like, it's going to work out.

Speaker 1: 23:29

It's one part, action, but another part of just this belief that it will. I think there's a couple things that I want to unpack here. If you have a tendency to struggle with negative self-talk, specifically around doubting yourself. Maybe that's doubting your what you're doing in your business. Maybe it's doubting your program. Maybe it's doubting your long strategy. Maybe it's doubting your ability to make sales. Maybe it's doubting what you're doing on social media. I don't know what that looks like, but if you have a doubt around a specific area in your business, i want you to start noticing how much of your time is spent in thought that could be categorized as self-doubt, versus thought that's focused on moving you forward, believing that it's possible, taking action to align with the outcomes you want. I want you to think about that for a moment.

Speaker 1: 24:29

I think we all have something called a belief bank account. I want you to imagine that you have a bank account and every time that you do something and you follow through on a promise or something works out, or you do something and you fail, but you learn from it and you're proud of taking action. Every time you inch forward in life or business, you're making deposits in your belief bank account. You're creating those quote-unquote receipts that you are doing it. The struggle with those who spend their time self-doubting is you're taking withdrawals out of that belief bank account. And if you are struggling with your confidence, if you are struggling with making decisions and moving forward, i would bet that your belief bank account is overdrawn, which means you are spending more of your time doubting your own strategies, doubting your own abilities, doubting your own ideas, than you are believing in those ideas. And you might be thinking Heather right now all right, believe, believe, believe. That sounds super, whatever.

Speaker 1: 25:40

But here's, and I'll say, this belief has to be backed up with action. Okay, you can't the bus stop thing. You can't just be like I believe I can catch the bus and then sit your ass on your front porch and believe that you catch the bus, like that's not how you strengthen your belief. You strengthen your belief in yourself and your own future and your own success by taking the actions to back it up. And the more that you get in this synchronous motion between those two things, the more that you take an action and then follow up that action, or you have a thought right, i'm going to do something, and then you actually do the thing the more that you grow your own confidence that, oh, i did what I said I was going to do. I mean, let's talk about something very simple here.

Speaker 1: 26:32

How many times do you break promises to yourself? Be honest, how many times do you say, oh, i'm going to go work out today, or I'm going to drink more water today, or today is the day that I'm not going to go into the snack basket in the pantry, right, these are health related, but I think these are easier ones to follow. Or maybe it's the I'm going to write a newsletter this week, or this week I'm going to post on social media seven times. This is the week, this is the month I'm going to start using Instagram Reels, or I don't know. Whatever it is right. How many times have you kept repeating the same this is the day, or this is the week I'm going to do X, and then you haven't done it. Now I say this because, friend, i have done this many a times.

Speaker 1: 27:15

In fact side note, if you've been listening to my show for years, you know, back in 2021 and in 2022, i got super intense and did 75 hard multiple times, and for me, 75 hard, which you don't know that it's like a super extreme mental. It's like a mental challenge, mental resiliency challenge. It's also a very physical challenge working out twice a day. I won't go into it. Anyways, i have two episodes around that and there's some. It's really really good follow up. If you're going to need this like hell, yes, follow through on myself, believe in myself. That would be a very good episode. I interviewed my friend, franny, who inspired me to do 75 hard, so that was back in 2021. So we'll link to that episode there.

Speaker 1: 28:00

It's calling like keeping our promises. Anyways, this self doubt belief base. When we don't keep promises to ourselves, we train ourselves to not believe that our what we say is actually what we're going to do. So no wonder when something goes wrong in our business, we then doubt our ability to navigate it because, historically speaking, we haven't followed through on our other things. So why would we be able to follow through on this?

Speaker 1: 28:31

important thing I want you to start thinking about here is again how much of your time do you spend doubting your decisions, whether it's after them or before you're making them? How much time do you spend doubting with whether or not you're doing the right strategy? That's a big one. I hear this one from my clients Everyone's looking for the right strategy. Is this the right way to do it? I want to know the right way to tell my story. I want to know the right way to structure this. I want to know the right way to market online.

Speaker 1: 29:02

And if I were to go back to this whole or unbelief, i don't believe in a right way. I believe in the way I want to do it and figuring out an effective way to do it. It's the next way, this is just the way, and I'm going to learn from it and then figure it out from there. So it comes back to where you're directing your attention Is it around? is it around like okay, let's just use an example here.

Speaker 1: 29:32

Let's say, let's use the example I used to begin around the business owner who was struggling with their course launch. Let's say you have a membership or you have a course, maybe it's brand new, or you've been trying to figure out how to sell it for a while. It's just not selling at the pace you want, okay. And now you're thinking like, ah, i, it's just, i need to retool it. If you're thinking like, ah, maybe, maybe the call schedule isn't working for people, maybe I need to do more live calls, maybe that's it. Maybe if I, if I switched from having no support or just like one monthly call for a couple of months. Maybe I'll switch it into weekly calls, maybe I'll, maybe I'll help them implement it and offer more sessions.

Speaker 1: 30:17

Well, here's my thought is, if you haven't gotten any feedback from anyone in your program that they're struggling with implementation, if the people who are taking your program and they're happy, relatively happy I want you to pay attention to something. You're fixing the wrong problem. You're trying to go back to what you can control, which is how do I control the quality of product? but just know You don't have a sales or you don't have a product quality thing. You have an issue of you're not generating sales.

Speaker 1: 30:45

But this challenge for so many entrepreneurs is they don't know how to tweak and adjust their sales system. So they focus on what they know, which is what they teach, which is how they facilitate the transformation. I want you to hear that again. What most business owners do when they're struggling and they're not getting a sales, they start figuring like they start tweaking their program, not their sales system. Or this happened to me on a client call last week. The business owner was struggling with sales and they wanted to tweak their marketing plan. The challenge was is their sales system wasn't working. I don't really care about the marketing plan. They were getting leads in, but their sales system wasn't working.

Speaker 1: 31:31

Now, what do I mean when I say sales system? Your sales system is how actually people find out about your offer and then buy your offer. So, whatever that looks like for you, maybe you do sales calls, maybe you have a funnel that leads to a webinar, maybe you do challenge launches, maybe you do live launches or it's evergreen. There's a lot of different ways that you can quote, unquote, launch your program And it doesn't have to be live. It could be evergreen, it could be call based, it could be application based. The tactic honestly doesn't matter.

Speaker 1: 32:01

But that environment around the sale is a sales system, and what I find for most business owners is their belief, their doubt in their product, their doubt in their marketing plan is misplaced. It's the sales system that is a problem. You got to believe in your product. You got to sure tweak it, but you have to believe that your product is good and then switch your focus to the thing that you actually need to work on. Now my big thing is the reason why I have such high belief is I back up my shit with data. I look at the numbers. I let the numbers dictate the decisions, not my emotions. That's why I'm able to focus more on like belief and saying well, this is working, stop doubting it, focus over here.

Speaker 1: 32:48

Now let me give you a couple of things to make this tangible, because I want this to be helpful for you. So if you're struggling with self doubt in your business or even in an area of your life right now, i want to give you four things, four things that you can do to help yourself bring your belief bank account positive and start stockpiling a bit so that you can start seeing momentum in your business. So, number one I want you to look for proof, look for your receipts for your own success. Now, some this might be easy for you. This might be very difficult for you, i don't know. But what I find with most business owners when I talk about share with me your wins, people have a hard time with that, beyond just kind of surface of what happened the last maybe 72 hours. So I want you to look for the proof And what I want you to do is maybe step outside of your specific thing you're challenged with right now and ask yourself, looking back in my career, the last 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.

Speaker 1: 33:47

However back you want to go, i want you to think about times where you failed and then thrived. I want you to think about times where you had your back against the wall. I want you to think about your hardest times and the resiliency that you had, what you overcame to make it work. I want you to think about promotions. I want you to think about successes. I want you to think about not just the big, shiny ones, but think about those quieter ones. When was the time you stood up for yourself? When was the time you stood up for others? When was the time where you had no business believing that something was possible, but you had the balls to do it anyway? I want you to start writing down your proof that you are a bad ass, because you are, but sometimes we forget it. So step number one I want you to create your own little proof, proof list, because the logic brain in you you're fighting with that. The emotion is telling you that it's not working. Your logic brain can help quiet that by you put some proof to paper.

Speaker 1: 34:50

Number two this is one of the things that I do is I have a proof folder. So in my business specifically, anytime there are wins. Whether it's through direct messages, whether it's in my group, whether people do it on calls, whether get email replies, i screenshot and save everything. Now you might be like, oh shit, how the screens. Yeah, i do. And if I share it publicly as social proof, i always get permission. But high screenshot, because anytime I have a self-doubt or maybe I'm having an emotional week during a certain time of the month and I'm like wanting to burn down the business and what the hell am I doing? The easy way for me to like nip that in the bud is to look at my proof, specifically the proof that I have building this business.

Speaker 1: 35:40

So number one was looking historically about your life proof. This one's really about your work here in your business with clients, or even just sweet little notes of when you're guest speaking, somebody saying, oh my gosh, you were wonderful. Like, oh, this is exactly what I need to hear. It doesn't matter how big the compliment or how big the transformation or whatever the note was. If the note put a smile on your face, throw it in your proof folder So that way when you're a moment of struggle, you can redirect your mind to how did this? This is why we're here, this is why we keep showing back up. Let's go Get yourself a proof folder. Now I call it a wins folder or a hooray folder. Can't remember what I have it titled, but I peek at that thing pretty often.

Speaker 1: 36:23

Okay, number three, third thing that I want you to do you've looked at your proof. You are building a proof folder which, by the way, that is just a process I do Like in general. I screenshot and I have it on my phone. I also have an email folder with it because, depending on if it's a photo or it's an email reply. But number three, number three and four, these are ones that are gonna be more of like a meaty focus on your business.

Speaker 1: 36:45

So, number three, you need to start training yourself to redirect your thinking. So it's gonna be harder to notice when you're going down that self doubt spiral. You might need an accountability buddy to help you understand that you be doubting. Right now, you be taking withdrawals out of your is your belief bank account. You need to start seeing when it happens Now. The more you start noticing, the faster you'll be able to catch it, and this is what I'm good at. I now notice when I'm self doubting and I can spin myself out of it faster by redirecting with better questions. I talk about this all the fricking time.

Speaker 1: 37:19

Redirect your thinking by redirecting your questions. If you're saying, oh, this sucks, my thing is bad, why is this not working, all of those are poor quality questions that are driving your thinking down, taking deposits out of your belief bank account. So what we have to do is instead ask empowering questions, questions like what can I learn from this? Questions for what next step could I take that could move me forward? How could this be working for me? How could this be a good thing? What can I do next Forward, propelling questions. If you want a list of more of those empowering questions, we will link to the episode where I talk about the quality of the questions that you ask and how to redirect your thinking in that way. That is a really good follow up.

Speaker 1: 38:07

But you cannot. You can't build your business sustainably and spend your time not in the self doubt gutter if you cannot redirect your own thinking. And this is an area where having a coach, having an outside perspective, being an environment where they're really gonna pull this out of you, whether it's in a group program or you have a one-on-one coach, this is really powerful. But also, you cannot delegate this task out of your own brain. You have to be able to do this for yourself too. So have a whether it's a buddy, whether it's a program and it's your own self habits.

Speaker 1: 38:42

You have to start redirecting your thinking away from self doubt, because we have to think about the balance tipping of the scales here. On one side, we have high belief in ourselves. The other side, we have self doubt. And remember the belief side. It just has to be a ton of it, more than self doubt, for you to start seeing progress. I'm not talking where I believe in myself 99% of the time, friend. I mean, it's the scale sometimes tips, but we just need to believe in ourselves a little bit more than we doubt ourselves. That's where we get started, and when we're doing new things, that scale is gonna feel pretty heavy on the self doubt side.

Speaker 1: 39:19

But that's where our proof list comes in To help us remember even though I haven't done this one thing, i had to be before. I've done many things that I can pull from. I always figure it out. I always end up surviving. So even if this doesn't go according to plan, i know that I will be okay. I know that I will figure it out. I know what happens is going to be even better than I imagined, even if it hurts a little bit.

Speaker 1: 39:43

So, number three get good at redirecting your thinking. Number four, and this one, i think, is so important, so freaking important, but it won't work unless you do number three too, redirecting your thinking. But number four is the once you start with that belief, like that belief is just a little bit more We're focusing into I can do this, i believe it's going to happen positive, constructive questions to start driving our critical thinking skills. Once we're doing that, then we need to start focusing on the skills. Oh, my goodness, the skills, the skills, the skills, the skills are the most freaking important thing beyond your thinking and business. That will help you be as successful as you desire.

Speaker 1: 40:28

The struggle is skill building isn't sexy. Swipe files are sexy, templates are sexy, fast passes and tracks, fast tracks and just ways to get to quicker things That's what's sexy. But skill building, my friend, it takes time and much of the time those skills are under the surface and they're not highly praised, because skills take time to develop. But skill building, specifically the skill of selling, the skill of speaking, the skill of redirecting your thinking, the skill of innovation, the skill of communication, the skill of knowing your numbers and data. Yep, these are all skills. They're going to take practice And I want you to remember your skills are like a muscle that they might be a little weak and sore at first, but you can't back down.

Speaker 1: 41:17

You got to keep putting in the reps. So what's powerful for you to understand is where you're having self-doubt. Ask yourself the question is this an indication that my skill in this area is weak? And I would bet. I would bet, if you are struggling selling your services consistently, you're really having a lot of self-doubt around that program or around the way that you're launching. What we need to do is focus on, we need to build the skill of selling. If that's an area that you struggle with, you're in the right spot.

Speaker 1: 41:53

We're going to talk about selling a lot on the show, but that's what I want you to start thinking about. If you're like, okay, it'll work on the skill of selling, you're going to start asking different questions. Okay, well, what is my selling system? How am I selling? What am I learning from it? What's working, what's not working? Then you can start building up those skills around, how you talk to people, how you lead sales calls, how you craft your offer, how you write the copy for your sales page or your follow-up sequences. We can start geeking out, looking at the data and getting better in those areas, but until we have the clarity that it's a skill that we need to work on, we get distracted by the self-doubt and start trying to grasp it, straws it a bunch of other things.

Speaker 1: 42:34

Okay, my friend, that was the message I need to share with you today that if you are struggling with self-doubt in any area of your life or business, you can't doubt your way to success. I don't know who said that quote, but it's so freaking true. You have to believe that it's possible for you and you have to believe in your ability to figure out, even if it's going to be fumbly. My friend, most of what I do is very fumbly. I just learned how to make it seem graceful and make fun of myself. I fumble on my words and I have fun along the way. You have to figure out your version of that.

Speaker 1: 43:09

Now, at the time of this recording, this is coming out on. Let's see the sixth, i think, of June 8th, the eighth of June. This is coming out the eighth of June, oh my gosh. Okay, if you hear this episode at the time, it's coming live couple time. Relevant announcements for you.

Speaker 1: 43:25

So this day today, on the eighth, is the final day of the Rise of the Digital CEO training. I've been talking about it for weeks. It's my business coach James Wedmore's three-part training series all around stepping into the role of a digital CEO and building a sustainable and scalable online business. That is by your design. So, session number one we talked about your role in business Training. Number two was Motherfrikin Fire, where James really broke down. What is the selling system about? What are the specific five steps that you need to put into place to generate money consistently in your business? So if you missed that training, be sure to jump into the link in the show notes so that you can go back and watch that training while it's on replay. It'll only be up for a maximum of another week. Depending on when you're listening to this, it might already be expired. So grab that. It's at heathersakercom forward slash digital CEO.

Speaker 1: 44:20

And then this weekend, friend, this weekend, on Saturday, the 10th of June, i will be giving a sneak peek at my exclusive bonus bundle that I am doing as an affiliate of Business by Design, which is James' program that he is launching. Cart opens on Monday, the 12th, and if you enroll in Business by Design through me, you're a coach. Heather, i have a bonus bundle that you are just going to be freaking thrilled about, and it's going to help you put into practice a lot of the things we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks. And, of course, as a speaking coach, you know I'm going to be helping you look and sound like the pro that you are, so keep an eye out for that. If you by chance listen to this later, don't worry, we're still going to have great resources for you, but if you're listening to the time this goes live, i really hope that if this resonates with you, you at least jump into the free training to see what it's all about And if you want some help putting some of those skills and systems in place, james' program is a really, really great compliment to mine. He's the one that I learned from to really get my systems in place for my online business, And I highly highly recommend working with him and his team. All right, friend, i hope you're feeling a little more empowered today If you want to keep going and listen to a few more episodes to binge.

Speaker 1: 45:33

There are some great resources for you in the show notes. Go check them out And I will see you again next week. Thanks for listening to another episode of the hint of hustle podcast. If you're in a season of hustle, consider this the permission slip. You didn't need to take a beat. Go on a walk stretch, call a friend, go reheat that coffee for the fourth time and actually drink it. Because those big dreams you're chasing, they require the best version of you. And if those goals include expanding your audience, establishing your industry credibility and selling your premium price programs, the best way to tackle this is through speaking. Your voice is your best brand asset And we'll teach you how to use it as a marketing tool. Head on over to the speakercocom forward slash, start And I'll see you there.