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In your journey to establish a thriving business, getting lost in the web of external advice, strategies, and opinions is too easy. Between coaches, courses, social media, friends, and family, there is always someone with an opinion on what you’re trying to accomplish.
The problem is the more you listen to those outside of you and neglect your own internal wisdom, the more you are giving away your power to forces outside of you. Today, it’s time to TAKE YOUR POWER BACK.
Hey. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Today, we're gonna talk about when business owners give away their power. In the pursuit of building a successful business, we often get entangled in so much advice in all of the strategies and in many opinions of other people. This happens at every level of business in different ways. So this isn't just for you if you're starting out. It's not just for you if you're established.
It's for both of those and all of the in betweens because no matter where you are, you can slip into a pattern of giving away your power. Let's talk about what that means. What do I mean by giving away your power? This happens when you look outside for answers and you forget to tap into the wealth of knowledge and intuition that you have within. Here are some examples of how power can be given away. Maybe you share a business idea with a family member and their fear turns into warnings of caution for you, and then you hesitate to move forward. You believe the fear and you lean into the caution and adopt that as your own, rather than realizing that they're just trying to protect you, but they're not wired to do what you do. They don't have the same drive or passion or idea. Maybe they don't have the same level of risk tolerance that you do to step into entrepreneurship to begin with.
So if you have a business idea, it might feel good to share that with others, but you have to be careful because they might not have the same level of passion to go after that business idea. Here's another example. Even when the strategies of a successful coach don't seem aligned, or maybe there's a program that you're in that has a lot of business owners and a coach doesn't know your specific business in-depth, you still trust them more than yourself because they've got the results that you want. You look at them and you say, they must know what they're talking about. They have these results that I want. And even though this doesn't feel good to me, it doesn't feel like something that I really want to do long term. Or even though they don't know all the ins and outs, they must know enough because they have results and then you take action anyway that almost always leads to circling back around to what it is that you actually want to do. If something doesn't feel aligned, if you would make a different decision given the knowledge that you have of your business, then following a coach just because they have the results is another example of giving your power away.
Here's another. Maybe there's a marketing trend or an industry trend and it causes you to change direction. It shifts your focus. Maybe you get shiny object syndrome and you decide that since everyone is doing this thing, whatever that thing is for the moment, that you must need to do that too. And so you pivot. Maybe you get feedback from a team member that causes you to second guess your decisions. Maybe you're giving them direction on a project and they say, you know, I really don't think that that makes sense or, you know, I really think that maybe this would be better. And it's So important to listen to your team and to gather that feedback, but it's also important to run that through your filter and to stay with the decisions that you've made.
If you feel strong about them, then you've got to stay in your power. Another example is setting pricing based on what your competitors are doing. Instead of looking at the value that you offer, maybe you're saying, Okay. Well, so and so is charging this, so I need to charge the same thing. Or maybe you're even saying they charge this, so I need to charge less because they're further along than me or they are better than me or whatever you think. Right? All of those thoughts are leading to you handing your power away and charging based on what someone else decided. You don't know if that's working well for them. You don't know if they are successfully selling.
And even if they are, that doesn't mean that that's what your pricing should be based on your experience and based on your value. And then in general, here's another example, when something just feels off. Maybe everyone else says this right, but it feels off to you and you ignore your gut feeling. Maybe you just got this intuition or this feeling that it's not what you need to do, but you move forward anyway. Those are all examples of giving away your power. And of course, there's so many others. When you listen to those, I want you to really reflect on whether you are giving away your power. And then let's talk about why that happens.
If you are giving away your power, I want you to understand why. So I've got 4 main reasons that I want to dive into with you here. The first is seeking constant validation. Maybe you're second guessing your decisions and that's leading you to rely heavily on external validation. Feedback is valuable, of course, but over reliance can strip you of your decision making confidence. We want you to make decisions, and then follow through on those decisions. You're going to learn so much more by following through than by shifting and pivoting constantly and it's important that you build trust in yourself by validating your own decisions versus seeking that externally. Okay? The second reason why business owners give their power away is a fear of making mistakes.
No one likes to fail. However, fear of failure can lead to an overreliance on advice from other people. Maybe you seek out expert advice. And then as we talked about, even if it doesn't align with your vision, you're following through just because you don't want to make a mistake. You don't want to fail. If instead of worrying about failing, you trusted yourself. If instead of fearing mistakes or delays, again, you trusted yourself and your decisions, most of the time you will actually get there faster. Whether that's through learning from the failures because there are lessons to be learned that you need to learn or whether it's because you actually stay with what you knew needed to happen anyway.
The 3rd is a lack of self awareness. If you're not clear on your own business values, your strengths and weaknesses as a CEO, then it becomes really easy to get swayed by others' perspectives. In other words, If you're not sold on what you do, if you're not sold on what you bring to the table, if you're not sold on what you offer, if you're not sold on why you want to do whatever it is that you're doing, then it becomes really, really easy for someone else to step in and give you their opinion and for you to shift gears. So no matter what it is that you're doing, your offers, your marketing strategy, the way that you show up and lead, I could go on and on. No matter what it is that you're doing, you need to know why. And you need to sell yourself on why you're doing what you're doing and get really clear. The 4th reason why is over delegating decision making. Delegation is of course essential.
I've Talked a lot about delegation. I definitely believe in it. But interesting, all major decisions to your team can become a weakness if you're not providing any direction, any input. If you're not holding yourself and your team accountable to something bigger, something that you've already defined, whether that's the big picture vision and overall business objective, specific goals. You need to get clear on those and communicate those to your team so that decision making is aligned, and then you need to hold them accountable to making sure any decisions you do delegate are aligned and you need to make sure that you don't over delegate, or in other words, abdicate decisions that you need to be involved in. Ultimately, instead of giving away your power, you need to learn to trust yourself. You need to learn to stand in your authority. To reclaim your power, that all starts by strengthening your self awareness of when you're giving that power away.
The 1st step is simply just noticing when that's happening. Notice when you're abdicating decisions, when you're seeking validation, when you're making decisions out of fear and then shift back to what you know and what you want. Ask yourself what you would recommend to someone else in the same situation. This question brings so much clarity. Sometimes when I feel like I'm not sure what I want to do, I imagine that a client asks me the question and all of a sudden the the answers are clear. It's so funny how that happens. But all of a sudden, I know exactly what I would tell my client. And that's the advice that I need to take myself.
Ultimately, yes, you can gather advice, you can consider advice, but every decision comes back to you. You need to own the decisions in your business from a place of power. This is your business. No one else knows your business like you do, and you need to trust in that. You need to trust yourself. This is what's required of a CEO.
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