How to overcome the limiting beliefs holding you back in your business

I’ve been doing a series of instagram lives lately to promote my Brand Accelerator programme and the team of experts I have on it.

Last week I spoke to Self Belief Business Coach Vicky Shilling about the stories and limiting beliefs many entrepreneurs tell themselves and which hold them back from stepping into the next stage or level of their brand. Such a hot topic in this age of relentless content creation and social media, where the pressure is huge to show up and be seen.

You can watch the conversation with Vicky here on YouTube…or you can read the show notes below.

If you’re more of a reader, here are the show notes:

Lucy: Good morning this is Lucy from Designs for Growth and welcome to this live on a lovely sunny Friday morning in August. I’m here today because I’m going be having a chat with Vicky Shilling who is a self belief business coach. This is gonna be a super interesting conversation!

Hello Vicky, maybe you’d like to tell us who you are, what you do and who you love to work with.

Vicky: Thank you for having me inviting me. I am Vicky Shilling and I’m a business coach. In the last few years I have really been specialising in the self belief and self trust aspects of running a business. I have helped solo entrepreneurs, particularly in the health and wellness space, to set up and grow their businesses. I have taught all the things … how to put packages together, what words to put on your website, how to market yourself with and without social media… I’ve covered it all. Then I really realised that for a lot of the clients, it didn’t seem to matter how perfect the plan was, how beautiful the branding was, how well designed the website… if they didn’t have the right mindset; if they were struggling with their self confidence, their self belief. So I trained a couple of years ago in self belief coaching because that was the bit where I was really hitting walls with clients. I realised my clients’ confidence and self trust has to come from in within, so that’s a bit that I help them with now.

Lucy: brilliant! I know you’re fixing a problem and plugging a gap because I see it with my own clients; we dig deep into strategy, we build a new website, a fantastic new brand - and this is often a really deep, personal journey - but then clients then find it difficult to now step into that new version of their brand. They know where they want to go, they’ve done the work, they are excited about it but there’s still something holding them back. So I think that is where the self belief work really comes into play. Did you retrain, Vicky, as a coach or how did you how did you pivot into this work?

Vicky: It was it was more like an add-on to the coaching training that I’d already done. Coaching, as lots of people will know, is different from mentoring or where people are giving you a strategy and a blueprint. I had done that mentoring work but trained as a coach too, which is more about helping you to find the answers. But what I felt I was missing the self belief coaching qualification, which I did with Sas Pethrick who runs the Self Belief School. It has a nod towards what has happened in the past; it’s not counselling, it’s not therapy, but it’s a real acknowledgement that where we are in our business and how we show up - or don’t show up - and how we or don’t use our brand is very much a reflection of the stories and the things experiences that we have gone through; whether that’s childhood or previous jobs or current relationships.

The kind of stories and the beliefs that we hold are often very protective ones and try and help us to avoid perceived risks. We think “I don’t wanna disappoint people”, “I don’t want to fail”, I don’t want to succeed” maybe, “I don’t want to lose something”, “I don’t want to be judged… all of these kind of things that we may have experienced in the past. Our brains have been wired to try and protect us from those things that have happened before. So the training that I did was to find a way to acknowledge and see these stories and find a way forward.

Lucy: So when clients come to you, how do they describe their feeling or how do they acknowledge that they need your help? Because I hear a lot of people say when it comes to putting themselves on social media, for example, “I don’t know what to write about” or “I don’t know what to talk about” or " it’s too overwhelming” or “I don’t know I don’t know how to use the tech.” And I think well, we’ve just written your website so you’ve loads of content and you know what your products and services are, we know your customers are… so I’m wondering what the how do they express the problems that they’re having?

Vicky: I think it can definitely manifest as a practical problem. Clients think they need to rebrand or they don’t understand the tech, or they say they don’t have enough people on their mailing list or they’re just going to join this program that’s gonna teach me about Instagram. So it can manifest like that. But often, like you say, especially now we’ve got things like chat GPT that can come up with whole marketing plans for you and of course, this is the point where I think people do end up reflecting and realising there’s something going on. So it can also show up as a ‘stuckness’. The client has aspirations of where they’d like things to be but they just don’t believe they are that person that can get there. Or they never seem to get started with it. They are safe and in the comfort zone, They know they’ve got more to give. They know they want to have more impact, but something always holds them back. Naturally that protective voice turns it into “oh well, you don’t know enough yet” or “ just do a few more years” or “just get a few more clients” or “just earn a bit more money” or “just when the kids leave home”… whatever it is. That’s when that kind of awareness kicks in. Clients know they are made for more and that they are getting in their own way. I want to uncover what that is and I want to help them move past it.

Lucy: For you, ideally, would you get involved in the process at that stage once the brand strategy has been completed or would it actually be helpful for you to get in there earlier on in the process?

Vicky: I don’t think it matters when that kind of realisation happens. Of course, the earlier the better. You and I know that running your own business it’s the biggest self development journey that you ever go on. Yes of course there’s some practical skills necessary to growing a business, but beyond getting the basics of those practical skills, it’s important to think about what you might be doing or thinking, or how you are showing up (or not showing up) that’s getting in that way. I can kind of come in at any stage where that self awareness has reached that point. And it might be during a process like you do with your clients, where there’s that realisation that “I’m liking this process but I’m still afraid of what comes on the other side”. “I’m still afraid of judgement or criticism or failure”… whatever it is on the other side.

Or it might be earlier on in the process. Some people are extremely self aware, they’ve done some of this work, they are aware of their stories; they know what happened to them in childhood, they know that voice of that horrible old boss that that keeps telling them that they’re not doing enough, and that’s the voice that they carry with them. The difference with the work that I do is how do we change that. How do we take that voice, understand it, have some compassion about where it’s come from and what it’s doing for you… and still smash your goals.

Lucy: What kind tools do you use with your with your clients?

Vicky: I think the biggest one to start with is is awareness. The second part, which I think surprises quite a lot of people, is compassion. We really look at articulating and describing that protective part of yourself. Some people will call it an inner critic; they will describe it like their old boss, or their mother in law, or some horrible voice that they don’t like…and that needs a lot of compassion, because it’s a part of yourself that is trying to keep you safe. It’s trying to keep you alive, it’s trying to keep you liked and needed and away from uncomfortable situations. That’s what how the human mind is wired - we just want ease and comfort all the time. And we know running a business does not involve ease and comfort all the time! And so to achieve that level of compassion we do a kind of lots of visualisations and a lot of dialogue and conversations with that ‘protector’. I call it the ‘safety guardian’. Then, moving forward, the tools that I will be using are to step into that other part of yourself which people might know as a kind of inner mentor, or your true self. Eckhart Tolle talks about it and I call it the ‘true experimenter’ because I really believe in this idea of creating experiments, testing things out. A lot of people I’ve helped in the health and wellness sector of very science minded and have that scientific approach. So we test out some new beliefs with that that true part of myself that sometimes just gets bulldozed over or screamed or shouted over by by the ‘protective voice’. We ask “what do I really believe about myself. about my work, about my clients, about how much money I can earn, about my visibility and my reach and what impact I can have?” I help the client find evidence for that, to find a way to prove that new belief.

Lucy: I’m sure for a lot of your clients, the evidence is right there. They’ve maybe been in business five or ten years, but they still have this little voice on their shoulder saying “ha, who are you to think you can do this?” I often say to to clients to look at their testimonials from the people who’ve raved about them, because that reminds them straight away that “yeah, I am pretty good at what I do!”

You don’t just work with people who are starting out in business, Vicky, do you?

Vicky: No. Often when we start out the fear is massive, but it can still be there five 10 15 years on as your business evolves.

Lucy: It’s reassuring to know that some of the biggest names in business and sports all suffer from self doubt, it’s part of human nature. But I think it’s amazing for solo entrepreneurs that you’re offering this work because it really is something that holds people back. I’ve launched incredible brands for incredible people and then I don’t see them online. I’m like where are they? What’s happened? I know it’s that inner voice or they’re comparing… I think that’s very common. People comparing with their peers, not the people that they’re actually trying to sell to!

Vicky: That is very real and in the world of social media, where we’re seeing what everybody is doing, it’s easy to look and see what your competitors are doing. What’s worse is that the algorithm actually feeds you your competitors!

I like the idea that we’re all on the planet in a different place. We don’t wake up and think everybody in America is just really lazy cause they’re all in bed right now, we just think they’ll get up when the sun comes up for them and it’s their time! We don’t think oh everybody in China is much more intelligent and clever and going make more money than us just because they got up before we did! We’ll all have our moment, we’ll all have our time. No one’s in exactly the same place as you, no one starts in the same place same, nobody has the same stories, belief systems and experiences that you come with. And so some of us have a little bit more work to do on those things in order to to see the success we want in our businesses and and that’s okay.

Lucy: that is a lovely way of thinking about it!

Vicky: I do think habits and inbuilt systems and beliefs and protective beliefs are there for a reason and they’re quite embedded. It does take time, which is a bit frustrating for for all of us, but it the results can be fantastic.

Lucy: You mentioned your book.. do you also have a podcast?

Vicky: I do. I started a new podcast in the last year called The Business of Self Trust. So I share a lot there around these kind of topics, around what is going on with the mindset, why can’t we trust ourselves what is it that’s holding ourselves back. My old podcast is called Just Start Now for anyone that wants to go through the back catalogue for of episodes

Lucy: Fantastic. thank you for that. I’m delighted that you’ve joined my Brand Accelerator team. The Brand Accelerator is a 12 week program that basically takes your brand from from meh to magic. We have Finola Howard on board as well and we start with the brand strategy and positioning, right through to a new brand visual identity, brand photography with the lovely Eva Blake and a brand new website. I’m now delighted to have you on the programme too!

Check out Vicky’s website at https://vickyshilling.com/ and if you’re interested in joining the next cohort of the Brand Accelerator, you can find out more here.