6 Mindset Blocks Keeping You Stuck in Business

With all of my clients and with myself, I have found there are 6 key mindset blocks that stop entrepreneurs growing in their business. In this episode I share these with you so that you can reflect and coach yourself to continue to move forward.

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Introductions & Preparing for Black Friday

Hello, lovely. Welcome back to the podcast. I’m your host Danielle Hu. 

We are in the second week of November. I am telling all of my clients, do not take your foot off the gas in business. A lot of people think, Oh, there’s only, you know, less than two months left of the year. I’m just gonna take it easy. December is preparing for holidays anyway, and that is not the mindset we want. November is one of my favorite months in business because of Black Friday. It’s where we see a huge, huge cash injection in the business because, or just all wired to buy during the week, right? Or even during the next few months with holidays coming up. And so as a business owner, it’s really important to position yourself at an advantage. We want to be prepared. We wanna make sure all of our marketing strategies are in place so that when we launch our offers, people are buying.

I’ve already started preparing all of my private clients, all of Momentum Mastermind for Black Friday in their businesses because failing to plan is planning to fail. I’m probably gonna do an episode next week all about how I plan for Black Friday. But if you want to get started right now, if you are an online business owner and online service provider and you are offering products, services, bundles, at the end of the month, I have prepared for you 50 Black Friday post templates and captions that are optimized for sales and conversions for you to just plug, play and be ready to use and see sales come in. I am offering this for $7, and you also have the option to upgrade and add on additional real and story templates, a posting promotional calendar, a Black Friday email sequence, a one-on-one Black Friday strategy workshop with me.

That’ll be really fun. So if you want a done for you sales strategy for the end of the month, just click on the link in the episode description and I can’t wait to help you. My intention with this offer is just to give you everything so you can focus on what you do best. You can focus on showing up without having to stress about copywriting, about sales, about writing in a language that connects with your audience, right? I wanna give it all to you, so stay tuned. I’m definitely gonna go more in depth showing you behind the scenes of how we prepare and how we are forecasting a five figure at least. So maybe a multiple five figure week because of Black Friday, and I hope that this energy gives you the momentum and the motivation that you need to get your business in gear for Black Friday.

Remember, this is not the time of year to take your foot off the gas. 

Mindset Blocks

So in today’s episode, I want to share six mindset blocks, keeping you stuck in business. And these are really common ones that I see with all of my clients at one point or another. This applies to you. If you are just starting out, even if you are an experienced entrepreneur, if you feel like you are experiencing a block in business right now, in your business flow, in your business income, then this episode is for you. Because if you can self coach and self-assess what is holding you back, we can pinpoint it and then we can move forward from there. 

Striving for perfection

The first mindset block is thinking that there is a perfect way to do something. This can look like Googling endlessly for an answer, asking your coach endless questions, expecting them to give you an answer and read your mind, read your client’s minds, right? Or maybe stopping yourself from starting a YouTube channel or posting consistently on YouTube because you think that there is a perfect formula that you have to follow. 

Sometimes new entrepreneurs, especially, they underestimate themselves and they feel like you know, they need to be having lots and lots of content prepared in order to post their first post, or they compare themselves to more seasoned entrepreneurs and they feel like they need to have all of these moving pieces in order to do something, and that is simply going to hold you back.

Sometimes I’ll get questions like, What is the best subject line for an email? Or what day of the week should I post on Instagram? Or like what types of content, right? And all of these questions are answered through execution, through testing and posting and seeing what your audience resonates with. And the sooner you recognize that you already have everything within you to get started to do the damn thing, it’s not going to hold you back anymore. You’re gonna stop looking externally for answers and just trust yourself to do what it is that you need to do. 

Expecting Answers

This goes hand in hand with the next mindset block that I see all the time, which is expecting someone else to give you the answer or feeling like someone else has the answer.

When in reality, you need to be paving your own path. You need to be nurturing and building your own audience, and that cannot come from anyone else. They can tell you how to do it, and they can give you an answer, but it’s not gonna be the answer where they’re doing it for you and all of your problems are solved. You still need to be in the thick of it and executing every single day instead of waiting for someone else to give you direction or to give you concrete action steps every single day. You really need to take your business into your own hands. What this can also look like down the line is I work with some entrepreneurs, and it’s this constant rewiring of the brain that you constantly need to be troubleshooting, finding what’s not working yourself, and then self-coaching to the next level.

You’re already at a point where you’re monetizing, and if you’re hitting in income ceiling, let’s say you max out at five figure months and you can’t seem to understand why you can’t break past that, this is where you troubleshoot. Think logically, what is holding you back? How do the numbers match up? And what do you need to do in order to change your results? What actions do you have to do differently? What thoughts do you have to be thinking differently and what’s gonna help you get there? I feel like a lot of times we have this ideal of what our business looks like, and sometimes when we get there we’re like, Okay, what next? Like, do I just operate at this standard for months and months to come?

And the answer is no. Because if you want your business to keep growing, you have to constantly be doing things differently and being able to self-assess instead of waiting for someone else to tell you, Hey, you know, you need to be running your business differently. You need to be doing this in your business. It doesn’t work like that, so we have to stop expecting other people to give us answers. 

Seeing the bigger picture

Okay, the next mindset block I struggled with for the longest time, and I still sometimes struggle with it now because I’m just an inpatient person and I want to see results immediately.

But what I’ve had to learn, what entrepreneurship really taught me is we need to be able to see the bigger picture of planting the seed and why we are doing something for the first time. So let me give you an example. Two years ago on October 5th, 2020, I launched the Wander Lover podcast. So that’s when our first three episodes went out. Every single week since then, we’ve released a new episode, and that’s hundreds of hours of recording, of editing, of coaching, of promoting and working on this platform, right? Connecting with all of you, answering all of your questions.

And when I launched the podcast, I told myself I would not ever skip a Monday. You guys have signed up and subscribed for new episodes every Monday, and I am here to deliver. And I held myself to that standard two years later. So in September of 2022, so two months ago, I started monetizing this podcast in the traditional sense where I turned on auto ads. So some of you may have heard some ads play pre-roll, so at the beginning of each episode as well as post role at the end of the episode. And so when I first signed up and turned them on in September, I really had zero expectation.

I was like, I’m, I’m doing this just for an additional stream of income, and I know eventually you know I’m going to grow it. I had no expectations with how much I was gonna make from this. And when I got my first ever payout in September, guess how much I made? If you guys are on my email list, you might already know, but if you’re not, I’m gonna tell you on this podcast that my first payout was 86 cents usd. So less than a dollar after two consecutive years of podcasting, my first payout was 86 cents. Some of you, when you first see your first payout, might look at that and be really, really discouraged, right?

Like after so many years of podcasting and you get compensated less than a dollar. But guess what I did? I took a screenshot and I went running to Ragz because I was so ecstatic. I was like, Holy shit, I just got my first payout from podcasting and it’s really like next to nothing. But I was just really excited about what this meant for the future of my business because I opened up a new revenue stream. I also knew that months and months after, I would not be going downhill from there, right? The more episodes I put out, the more listeners I get, the more money I will be making. And so I was just really happy.

I continued doing what I did every day. I continued running my business and I continued recording these episodes. And one month later for October of 2022, I got my second paycheck. And guess how much that one was? The last one was $9 and 41 cents, which is a significant increase from 86 cents the month prior, right? And it’s only gonna go uphill from there. I see so many new entrepreneurs throw in the towel prematurely and getting frustrated when they don’t see results immediately. I also even sometimes see this in more seasoned entrepreneurs getting frustrated. And of course, like I get frustrated too, but every time I zoom out and think of the bigger picture, all the frustration goes away with my clients.

I teach all of them one year, one plan, right? We stick with one strategy for one whole year because it takes time to see results. We can’t just get shiny object syndrome every month we launch something and then decide, Oh wait, let’s like create a course. Let’s create a membership, let’s create new offers, and let’s not work on marketing. We don’t do that. We have one streamlined strategy months and months out, so we know what’s coming up and how we are building. Whenever we launch an offer, it’s not the expectation that it fills up immediately whether or not it fills up. We see the bigger picture. Similar to turning on podcast ads, we are opening up a stream of income, right?

And over time, as we optimize the marketing, as we grow our audience, we know inevitably these offers are going to fill up. And so we don’t get discouraged by these short-term events or these short-term expectations because we know there is a bigger goal for us in our business. We celebrate the launch, the birth, Anytime we do something new, we celebrate. And that gives us the momentum to keep moving forward. One year, one plan, one strategy. So just imagine if today you launched a new offer and then for the next year you focused on the marketing strategy around it.

Obviously you’re going to get sales, you’re gonna get clients, you’re gonna get customers, right? But imagine if you launch something today and you get no sales the first day. What about the first week? When will you get discouraged and when will you stop? Probably prematurely, right? Probably too soon to see results. And that’s why people lose a momentum and they throw in the towel. Don’t be those people when you enter my community, we are distinguishing ourselves because entrepreneurship is a long term strategy. 

Procrastinating outsourcing

The fourth mindset block that I see a lot of entrepreneurs face is the feeling like they have to do everything by themselves, that they have to run every single part of their business without outsourcing, without hiring help, and the feeling that you need to reach a certain level of success in order to get the help, in order to reinvest into your business.

And what I see playing out is a lot of times this is often delayed by weeks or if not months. And had they just gotten the help they needed earlier, their business would’ve grown so much more by then. So oftentimes at the beginning that new entrepreneurs like, You know what? I’m gonna wait until I make $2,000 a month and then I’ll hire a va. Then they start making $2,000 a month, and then they’re like, Oh, wait, but then I’m gonna wait after I invest in my website or in branding or whatever. The next thing is when delegation and outsourcing should be your number one priority because it increases the number of outputs per week.

So the number of hours of output that people in your business have executed on per week, and that is always going to be more valuable than investing in any kind of branding or web design or technical aspect. So the mentality of feeling like you have to do everything yourself might be holding you back because you’re not running your business like a business owner. You’re running your business like a one man does all solopreneur, right? And we are in the businesses scale to grow and to see the bigger picture. So if you currently feel really burnt out with content creation, with tech, with sales, with coaching, with pitching hotels, or whatever it is that you do, and you feel overwhelmed and you’re not seeing the results, maybe you can look at getting help.

Maybe you can look at outsourcing a really time consuming task that someone else can maybe even do better, right? Imagine a part of your business just running flawlessly by itself, and you get to go back to your zone of genius. Start thinking, How can I run my business more efficiently instead of burning myself out as a business owner, right? And not seeing the results that I want. A lot of times it’s a mindset thing. A lot of people think it’s an investment thing and an expense cost that’s keeping them back, but it’s actually the mindset these investments will pay off again and again, and you just have to trust that you are able to make it do so.

Some people just look at the expense side and they’re like, I can’t afford that. I shouldn’t be spending on this. And they don’t see the bigger picture. We see the bigger picture. So if you’re feeling stuck, maybe see, Hey, can I get help? All right. 

Creating criteria blocks

The next mindset block that I see is people waiting to be successful or waiting for success instead of being success. And what I mean by this is a lot of people will think, Oh, I need a certain credential, or I need to be in business this amount of time, or I need, you know, these made up XYZ factors in order to do X, Y, Z.

So maybe it’s something like, I charge a thousand dollars a month for my coaching and I need to wait until I have coached for a year in order to raise my prices to $2,000 a month. That is fine. But if you are at a point where you feel stuck and you feel like you’re seeing income stagnation, if you feel like you’ve, you know, taken on so many clients that you really can’t take on any more clients and you still want more income, this would be where you start assessing, Hey, that success metric that I set for myself is that serving me right? And I waiting for my next level of success instead of just being the next level.

So can I increase my prices to $2,000 a month right now? There’s no one telling you no, the market is not regulated. There’s not any type of barriers where you’re like, I actually have to check this off and this off and this off. If you come from that mentality, a lot of times it’s gonna lead to confusion because you’re not understanding what makes you different than any other person in the industry, and it might hold you back. And a common theme with all of these mindset blocks is very often you are the only person holding yourself back. And when we can admit that to ourselves as business owners, it empowers us because all we have to do is make different decisions for our own business and we get different results.

So if you want to do things differently, if you are, you know, waiting for this next level entrepreneur that you know you’re destined to be, start acting like them, start being them instead of waiting for this imaginary day where you’re gonna feel ready, realize that that day in the future, might as well be the day right now, might as well be the present moment. You don’t have to wait for success, you need to start embodying it and being it, especially as a business owner, and I’m just gonna throw in here, we probably all know I tell all of my clients, but I really want you guys to internalize. We do not have room for victim mentalities.

We do not have any patience nor understanding of treating ourselves and our situations and our business from a perspective of being victims. We know we are so much more than that, and we operate from a place of inspired action where we take action, we take matters into our own hands and we execute on them. There is no use in blaming the economy, blaming the world, blaming, you know, other people. We don’t have time for that. So if you find yourself spiraling into these thoughts, we need to get out of that asap. Okay?

Recognising your reality

The last mindset block that might be keeping you stuck in business is inspired by a really good movie called Soul that we re-watched last week. And in it, there’s a quote that I wanna share with all of you because I keep going back to it and I just feel like it’s so powerful if you are an entrepreneur. So the movie is about finding your passion and purpose in life and in it, the story is about a young fish who swims up to this older fish and says, I’m trying to find this thing they call the ocean. The ocean says the older fish, that’s what you are in right now. This says the younger fish, this is water.

What I want is the ocean. And this is so powerful because I constantly work with my clients month after month, quarter after quarter, year after year to hit income goals and life milestones, like their first 5K month, first six figure year, quitting their job, booking a one way flight, right? There’s always these new milestones, and every single time we accomplish it and we celebrate, it becomes apparent, like it becomes their new normal. And we realize, you know, the next best thing will always be there, and it’s only a matter of time before it’s their reality. So the last mindset block is not realizing that you are already doing it.

You are in the thick of it. Whether you glamorize this future for yourself, where if you accomplish this, then you will be happy. If you hit your first six figure year, then you’re gonna feel like a successful entrepreneur. You are already in the ocean, you’re already swimming in it, right? Hitting those milestones really mean nothing. When you reach them, you’re gonna realize there’s always gonna be something you’re gonna look forward to, which is why it is so important to celebrate how far we have come, and to celebrate each and every moment, each and every day. Realize that you’re already doing it.

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If you feel stuck, if you feel like you’re missing something, this is all part of it. This is all part of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not easy. It’s a roller coaster, and there’s going to be ups and downs, and it’s just all part of the process. No matter where you are, you’re never gonna get rid of the lows, you’re never gonna get rid of the frustrations and the tech problems and the panics. If anything, you know, you’re just, they’re just gonna be replaced with different problems. Maybe it’s not gonna be a financial problem, but it might be, you know, a morale problem. When you have a team and you have to manage so many people, you’re never going to be problem free. And so realize that if you have committed to this path of building your own business, direction is more important than speed.

You’ve chosen this direction, and all of these are part of it. So celebrate each and every step. A practice that I do in my business as I am working towards reaching my first million dollar year at The Wander Lover is I have this album on my phone called Road to 1 million, and what I do is, every single time I see something really beautiful in the most simplest of ways in the present moment, anytime I really get into the zone of appreciating the beauty of my present moment of whatever it is that I’m doing, I take a picture or a video and I add it to this album to remind myself this is all part of the greater picture.

This is all part of the plan, this is the process. I’m not there yet, but I know I’m going to get there. And this is what each moment looks like. I’m gonna scroll through and just share some of the photos that I have put in here to help you realize like all the simple moments, all of the moments where there’s no giant celebrations, no giant conferences, no flights, your life is made up of these simple moments and you have to enjoy them. So super trivial moments, but the first photo that I have in here is a photo of me working at my parents’ house in front of this really large window, and there’s trees and clear blue skies and really pretty clouds.

I just thought it was such a magical moment being able to work on my business at my parents’ house, you know, not having to be in an office. And I took a picture of that and I added it to this album. This was also when I flew home from Portugal to attend my brother’s graduation, and it’s also a reminder that I can fly wherever in the world and still operate my business, right? I don’t need to ask anyone for vacation days. I don’t have to request time off, and it was just a really beautiful moment. Another example of a photo that I’ve uploaded in here was when Rags and I had this top story, Airbnb overlooking the ocean, and we were watching this beautiful sunset and he poked his head through the door, and I just thought it was so cute, and I uploaded a picture to this album because it was a beautiful sunset.

I was with someone that I love, and it’s part of the process, right? So this is all really beautiful reminders. Another photo, or no, this is a video that I uploaded, was when we were visiting Ragz’ parents in England, and I was in their garage working on something related to The Wanderlover, and I saw these beautiful shadows dancing on the carpet. They have so many trees in their garden, and they were just casting this really glittery, shimmering shadow on the floor. And yeah, I took a video of it and uploaded it to this album, and I have a total of 26 photos in here just as reminders, right?

They are really trivial moments, as one would say they’re not anything fancy. It’s not like when we stayed in five star luxury resorts, which obviously are also super special, but as reminders that no matter what it is that you’re going through, each present moment is so much more important than what could be achieved in the future. You are already on this path, so just accept it internally that this is what the path looks like. You’re not doing anything wrong if things aren’t going according to plan. You have the power to troubleshoot, right? And with all of these mindsets, if you just shift your mentality from what is keeping you stuck, to what gets you unstuck, how you can see things differently, how you can go seek help or take different actions to get different results, you’re going to achieve the success you desire.

That is it for today. If you were previously feeling stuck, I hope that this episode gave you some clarity on what you can be doing differently, how you can be thinking differently in order to get unstuck. If you feel like you need guidance or accountability in order to take you your life and your business to the next level, feel free to check out the resources on my website, attend some of my free classes, or apply to work with me one on one before the end of the year. I will see you guys in the next episode where we’ll be diving into Black Friday strategies. Have an incredible week. Love you all.

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