When Your Inner Rebel Kills Your Business

As you are growing your business, you will find that, against all good intentions, you are hitting your own inner resistance to change.

You know what you should be doing, but aren’t doing it.

You know you should be talking to others, having wonderful conversations with people in your target market, and making lots of offers to work with them, helping them, supporting them and doing what your business does, but you are just not doing it.

You are hitting that moment when a part of you says “I really, really want to move forward!” and another part says “There is NO way that I am going to do that. Not in a million years. This isn’t me. I can’t do it, I won’t do it.” Or, and this is the most dangerous way that you can self sabotage:

“There’s got to be a better way. I just don’t know enough, I have to do something else first.”

I had a client who was very good at EFT, and a well respected practitioner in her field.

She was frustrated that she didn’t have enough clients to be financially safe, and hired me to learn how she could create a high level income, doing the work she loved.

 

As we analyzed her business, we realized quickly, that her current target market was a market that was very well served with other programs that were offered for free. And they had never heard of EFT, and were skeptical, to say the least.

As a result, she was investing many hours per week educating people why they should work with her, giving free sessions and keeping her price point low.

Even though her work was clearly a good fit for the people she wanted to help, they had no interest, desire or even education to have a need to work with her.

They simply didn’t care that she could help them and didn’t see why they should pay her a fee, while there were so many other free options around.

 

Needless to say that my client was frustrated about this, and she wanted me to help her change this situation.

“How can I make them understand that what I offer is so much better than the free stuff out there?” was her question.

 

As we went through her own personal and professional background and analyzed her strengths and weaknesses, we found out that she had a wonderfully solid foundation in a field that would be readily willing to invest into working with her.

She knew this market inside and out, had lots of connections and referrals, she was even still a member in an organization that was serving this community. She was well liked and respected, and it might only take a few phone calls and business lunches to get her foot in the door and start speaking and getting clients.

But she struggled with the idea of letting those that had dismissed her for the past years of the hook so easily.

“There has got to be a way to make them understand and hire me, and I am going to find it!” was her response when we tried to change her business model.

All her abandonment issues came up.

All the judgment she had endured as a kid when she wanted something and people told her that she can’t have it.

All the resentment that nobody listens to her, even if she is right.

All the fear that she is not good enough, or people think she is not good enough.

The fear of judgment, the fear of failure, the fear of putting herself out there, the fear to be seen, and the fear of not to be seen.

The fear of being misunderstood.

 

In short: We hit her inner rebel.

She seemed very young as she started arguing why working with the population that didn’t want her services was the only thing she was interested in.

Her face, her voice, her gestures and expression got younger, she literally looked like a high school girl for a while, probably the exact age she was when she had discussions with her parents about what she can’t have.

She used words and sentences that had nothing to do with business decisions and entrepreneurship.

Abandonment came up, and sadness.

She felt defeated and overwhelmed.

And none of this had to do with building her business.

 

I offered her to coach her through this.

We can very effectively tap on the triggers that she experienced.

We can work through those limiting and self destructing feelings that were costing her business and her family her future right now.

We can address those memories that have hurt her in the past, and help her claim her power and focus back, so that she can create a life and business that she loves and where she is welcome.

All she needed to do was understand that it was her very young self that was making business decisions for her right now, acknowledge and heal this part of her. And then take a leap of faith and make a decision that she was going to change her life.

The doors opened for her.

She had a chance to create her own life now.

All she need to do was take a leap of faith and say “Let’s do it. I am tired of living this way!”

 

She wasn’t ready.

She couldn’t do it.

“There’s going to be a way to make this happen, to make these people understand that I am better than the free options they have available right now. I just have to find a way.”

I talked with her a year later.

Her financial situation had gone from desperate to severe.

The market that she wanted to reform was still not interested in working with her, and by now actually dismissed her, as she had gotten more and more angry about being ignored by them.

She had tried “online techniques”, they didn’t help her make money and cost her a lot of time to create.

Her relationship with her family was strained, to say the least.

Again, she asked me what she was doing wrong and what she could do to make money in her business, helping her desired target market.

 

“What could you do that you haven’t already done? I asked.

“I have tried everything. What am I missing?”

“You are trying to serve a market that doesn’t want you to serve them right now, and isn’t invested in paying for what you have to offer. To create income in your business and blessing others with your gifts, you will have to find out who is ready for your services right now.”

She looked at me with sadness. “You said this last time.” she said.

“I just don’t know who to work with.”

 

A year later, she was finally willing to see and hear which open doors had been waiting for her to walk through all this time.

She had literally invested tens of thousands of dollars of not earned income in inactivity and rebellion against a simple truth, the truth that she needed to modify her business model to be successful.

She had invested everything she could have very easily and successfully made if her resistance to change and healing hadn’t been so overwhelming.

Healing and support is all around us all the time.

But it takes a firm commitment that we will not let our inner rebel make decisions for us, and that we are willing to do whatever it takes to let go of what is holding us back and implement the necessary steps to move forward, whether we are afraid or not.

Sometimes, the next logical step is a leap of faith.

Are you ready to leap?

Love

 

Ingrid