Show notes:

132.-The-Most-Common-Mistakes-...ir-Growth-and-Leads-to-Burnout

Vanessa  00:00

Welcome to the Empowered brain, the only podcast using science, psychology and coaching to help you rewire your brain and create a life you love with your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, a Harvard grad physician, master coach and mother of two. 

Friends Welcome back to the podcast. I am so excited to be here with you today and share with you the most common mistakes smart entrepreneurs make that slow down their growth and leads to incredible burnout. So I'm going to start by sharing my journey today and then I'm going to jump into the most common mistakes in no particular order. Alright, so before I began a quick reminder that my business accelerator mastermind is launching January, and the waitlist is open. Now you can find the waitlist in the show notes. Enrollments going to open in mid December, and it's going to close a few days after it open. 

So get on the waitlist, so you can find out exactly when it opens. And when it's going to close, I would love to take you along on your journey of entrepreneurship. What the business accelerator mastermind is, it's essentially a very small, small, intimate group of entrepreneurs. And most of the folks that I work with are early in their stage of business anywhere between zero and usually less than $100,000 that they've made in their business. So if you're between $0.50 $1,000, but usually less than $100,000, and you want to create a profitable, sustainable side gig or business that you want to launch, get off the ground and automate so that it can start working and gives you the freedom that you want. I would encourage you to check it out. 

Again, you can go to the show notes. And in the show notes, you will see the business accelerator mastermind link for the waitlist so you can join the waitlist there. And and then just be on the lookout because check your emails because you will get the link as soon as enrollment opens. Okay, let's get started with today's podcast. 

Alright, so the purpose the intention behind today's podcast is to essentially share so many mistakes that I made and so many mistakes that I've seen so many young entrepreneurs make that really like slowed down my own progress, but slow down their growth too, and leads to a ton of unnecessary stress and leads to a ton of burnout. And honestly is a reason why so many people quit growing their business quit entrepreneurship really early on. And what I hope is that by you learning from my own failures and my mistakes, it will help accelerate your growth and it will help make your journey into entrepreneurship a little bit faster. Alright, so first, let me share my journey. I haven't really talked a lot about this on this podcast. So. So in 2017, I experienced one of the most transformational coaching programs I've ever experienced in my life. And it really had me start rethinking everything. It's the first time I had heard concepts like limiting beliefs and other things like that. I had experienced coaching before that, but not to this degree. And it was such a blessing because soon after that coaching program about eight or nine months later, I had a horrible experience at Department Chief, I was a medical director, I was the mom of two really young kids. 

And one of my kids had just been born. And you know, I was running this entire department and running a huge budget managing a ton of employees. And we a lot of things started happening right at the same time. So some of you may have heard this story before. But um, you know, my mom got diagnosed with stage four cancer at that time. And I was also right before we had our kid this is like right when I had had my kid, right before we had my kid I had had three miscarriages, so I was dealing with like, feeling failure, like being a woman because I couldn't get pregnant. And then, you know, continue like down the path. The hospital where we were running, our department puts our contract up for a request for proposal RFP, which essentially means they're looking at going in a different direction. So they may not want our group there, which could possibly mean that all the physicians, all the advanced providers, pas nurse practitioners, everyone was going to be out of a job including me. So all of this was happening around the same time and I am just doing my best to manage everything. And then one of my Doc's who's covering all of our night shifts gets really sick, and I have to take them off the schedule completely. 

So I come back early for my parental leave to start covering all these night shifts. I'm working like a ton of night shifts, trying to be a mom of two young kids still like breastfeeding, so I'm pumping in the middle of the night. And managing like my, you know, the physician and the advanced providers expectations about what's going to happen with their job doing all of this stuff at the same time while I'm trying to be present for my mom. And lo and behold, I burn out. And I didn't realize I was burned out, I just thought, you know, I started experiencing all these symptoms of chronic stress. I couldn't sleep at night, I started having like, really bad muscle aches back pain, I started dreaming about the hospital dreaming about the schedule. Dream, I would say nightmares, I started having nightmares. And you know, about nine to 10 months into this, I realized, like, holy smokes, like this is not healthy. This is not normal. Something is going on here. And that for me was when I realized I was experiencing clinical burnout. And I had to, like, take a pause, and really, you know, evaluate my life and decide what's going on here. What is it that I want to actually be doing. And I was super lucky because I was able to, you know, take a pause, hit the pause button, reevaluate my life, and decide that I really love leadership. And I really love being a physician. 

So you know, we transitioned out of that contract, we transitioned into a new contract, and I continued to be a department chief and a medical director. And I was on this clear trajectory at that time thinking that my path was to be in hospital administration. And I was doing all of the things to continue to advance in leadership in hospital administration. And at the mid middle of 2020, COVID. If you guys remember, COVID came, and I was a department chief and a medical director of an emergency department. And I was running the entire hospitals Incident Command Center, which is our disaster response to COVID. And we were one of the very first hospitals in San Francisco to experience a COVID case. So things were happening quickly and fast. And I was working harder than I'd ever worked before. And, you know, once we sort of created a new normal, around COVID of the, you know, like five months into that I got offered a CMO job and a chief medical officer job of a large hospital system. And again, I thought that that was supposed to be my trajectory, I thought that I was supposed to be on this path to become a hospital administrator. 

But when I got offered that job, there was something inside of me that was telling me you know, like, this is not the right next move for you. This is not the right next move for you. And I really paused again, and I reevaluated again. And I knew that it wasn't the right next move for me. But I was so afraid to say no, I was so afraid of the uncertainty of leaving a job. And I sort of knew what my calling was, I sort of knew it was in this work that I'm doing now. But I was so afraid to turn down that hospital administrator role that I stayed as a department chief longer than I probably should have, and medical director, you know, longer than after I heard that voice in that calling that it was time for me to transition out. I stayed there longer, a few months longer. And actually to be honest, maybe a whole year longer. Because I probably knew, you know, a year, a year and a half before I transitioned out completely that it was time for me to change. But I was honestly I was way too scared. I was scared of the uncertainty. And I had made up so many stories like what if I leave? And what about money? And what about this? And what about security and my identity as a leader, all of these types of things that I had to really just, you know, take some time to think about. 

So I was super blessed because I left a Kashmir and I leaned heavily, heavily heavily into courage. And I stepped away from that job. I said no to the CMO job. I still remember so vividly. When I wrote out the email to turn down the job. I wrote it down and I just left it there in my drafts, acted want to send it. I read it the next day and I read it the next day, I sat with my husband. And I was like okay, I mean, I think this is the right thing to do. And I hit send. And I remember being like that is like, I hope that was the right thing. And I can tell you now with you know, this, this vision now where I am today, looking back, it was 1,000,000% the right thing for me to do. It was just so scary. And in times of fear. One of the things we're really lucky that we can do is be convenient to courage, which is what I did in that moment. And you know, as I left that job, I had emailed one of my one of my mentors who was also a physician leader, and he sent me back the most thoughtful quote, and he I didn't send him this message before because I was so unsure. I didn't even want to tell anybody except my husband. But after he sent me the most thoughtful message. He sent me a quote from GoDaddy and it goes like this. Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation. 

There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans. That the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves to Providence being protective care of nature or spirit like spiritual power. And, you know, that quote has been kind of restated in a simpler way, which is essentially at the moment of commitment, the entire universe conspires to assist you. And that was definitely my experience, because there's this, there's this thing called Escape Velocity. And it's this concept that when you're ready to commit and change and do something big, drastic, different. As soon as you're ready to do it, you've got to do it as fast as possible. Because what will happen is you will get tested, opportunities will come up to keep you where you are to keep you in that same level, you know, before you can elevate and move forward. Opportunities will show up that if you can get out as quickly as possible, use escape velocity, and the entire universe will conspire in your favor. And sure enough for me, you know, once I had decided before I told anybody, but once I had decided that I was going to leave that job, I got offered a raise, I got offered more leadership opportunities. I was getting all these things happening. 

And I had already known about this concept of escape velocity. And I remember laughing being like, Is this really happening right now? Just like, just like what I learned. And so I committed and I transitioned out. And honestly, right, right, as I was doing that, I had a colleague reach out to me who was experiencing a lot of stress and burnout at work. And she reached out to me for help. And she ended up being my very first paid coaching client. It was hilarious. I met with her for an hour, I just gave her a bunch of tools and other things that she could use to support herself. And then she said, Well, how do you know all these things? I was like, Oh, well, you know, I been coaching because at that time, I had been coaching a lot of friends and other people that I had known, but never for money, because I was just kind of doing it as a hobby. It was just something that I was really good at that I love to do that always like really filled me up, like I was really passionate about it. And so she wanted to work with me. And she wanted to work with me professionally. 

So she ended up becoming my first paid client. And it was an incredible experience. She got a ton out of it. And she just shared the most beautiful testimonial with me afterwards. And when that happened, I was like, wow, this is like God, these quote, you know, here I am being so scared of leaving, and here shows up without me doing any work. I didn't mark it, I didn't do anything, just by showing up, you know, your ways of being she was drawn to me and asked me to leave to work with her. And soon after that, I got my second pay client. So this is all like the end of the year at the end of December 2020. And I got, you know, these two paid coaching clients right at the end. So I was like, Okay, well, I guess this is what I'm doing. I guess this is happening. So I again, dove headfirst to start my business. And, you know, the that very first year and 2020 before I had even, you know, before I'd even marketed before I even branded, I didn't make a ton of money, but I made about like $7,000 in growth. But then as soon as I committed and went all in Holy smokes, I started growing exponentially. Just I was just, it was shocking to me. And it was also really beautiful. But it was not by any means easy. There was so much work I had to do. There were so many mistakes I made, there were so many things that slow down my progress. 

There were so many things that caused unnecessary stress. For me, there were times where I was experiencing burnout again. And I was like, hold on a second, I'm not going to trade this crazy career as a physician leader where I really felt like at that point in my life, I was living my best life, I had a great schedule a job that felt super easy, but it was still really awesome. And I wasn't going to transition all of that and trade all that for this like entrepreneurial life where I'm working 100 hours a week, you know, and not getting the results I want feeling super stressed. And so I had to again, like pause, hit the pause button and reevaluate. And I did that a few times. And you know, I'm continuing to learn and to grow. But I've learned so much along the way. And that is what I want to share with you today. So today what we're going to do is we're going to go into all of the mistakes that really smart entrepreneurs make when they are starting to launch their business that lead to them quitting that lead to them burning out that lead to stress that lead to just really slow progress instead of really aligned progress. And now Next week on the next podcast, what I'm going to do is, I'm going to teach you how you can start taking the appropriate actions so that you can create a profitable and sustainable business. 

Okay, so with without any without in no particular order, here are the mistakes that I have seen that I have made for myself and that I have seen over and over and over again, my students and my clients make when it comes to starting a business, okay, so the mistakes entrepreneurs make, number one, they want to get to success really, really, really fast. Because why do we want to get to success fast, because we think that once we are successful in whatever we are creating our side gig, our business, whatever we are creating, once we are successful, once we get there, then feel like finally, you know, like finally I did it, I proved myself, I'm finally worthy, we've attached our self worth to success. And for a lot of us, especially if you're coming from an established career already, you are now having to prove yourself as an entrepreneur and you feel like you have to prove yourself to whatever whoever you've made up, maybe it's your past colleagues, your past bosses, your friends, from me, I had to prove myself to my family and to my colleagues, because here I am leaving, I'm a Harvard grad, leaving a career as a physician leader turning down a chief medical officer job for a large hospital system to go and start this business as a coach as a professional coach. 

And so I was like, Oh my gosh, like, I really have to, like make it work, or people are gonna judge me or laugh at me or whatever, I made up all these stories, all these illusions. And so I was trying to get there as fast as I can. And in my experience, a lot of smart entrepreneurs who are trying to prove themselves or are trying to say they're finally worthy, they are rushing to create this business. What that does is it causes you to overwork in the beginning. And it causes you to start throwing a ton of money into like to solve problems that probably Money isn't the solution at that time. So if this is you, if you are kind of resonating with this, and you think that the faster you'll get there, the sooner that you will feel something like finally feel successful, you'll finally feel like yes, I did it. Whatever you think you're feeling, I want you to notice what you're actually avoiding. Because what you are actually avoiding is feeling disappointed or feeling inadequate, and inadequate hoof that's a big one. That's that feeling associated with the thought that you're not enough. 

When you feel inadequate, you will throw yourself into work and you will overwork and you will overwork and you will overwork. And I guarantee you that if you're listening to this podcast, the problem is never that you can't work hard enough because you're probably a hard worker you like that's probably a given. If you're if you're drawn to this podcast, you're probably a hard worker by nature. So thinking that you're going to work harder to solve the problem is not going to solve the problem. It's just going to cause you to overwork and burnout. So if you have any unintentional thoughts, like I'm not successful until so for me, when I first started, I wasn't going to be successful until I hit six figures. And then I hit six figures. And I remember being like, Wait a second. That was Wait, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not successful until I hit multiple six figures. And then that happened. I was like, No, hold on a second. 

And I just kept moving the goalposts because that's what we do. So if you have any thoughts like I'm not good enough until or I'm not successful until just notice what that is. That's you thinking that when you get there, if you get there fast enough, you'll be successful. Okay, number two, smart entrepreneurs. Number two, the second mistake is they're not clear on their priorities. So what do I mean by this? So if you are leaving one career to start another, one thing you might be thinking is that second career is going to solve whatever problems you're having in that first career. So I use medicine as an example, because we have a lot of people leaving medicine to go start other things. And a lot of reasons why they're leaving it because they're burnt out. They're unhappy in medicine, they feel like they're getting taken advantage of all those types of things. And they think that the second career is going to solve that problem. Oh, my gosh, I had a coaching client who had this, this was his third career now. 

And the very first time we ever talked on our concept call, I remember hearing this pattern and being like, wow, hold on a second. You're jumping around from career to career because you haven't solved the core issue. And the core issue is not that you need to go start another career. The core issue is usually something along the lines of like, I'm not setting I'm not setting boundaries, like I'm afraid to set boundaries or I feel guilty setting boundaries or I'm people pleasing. or until I feel super guilty being a working mom, for example. So just notice that when you are leaving one career for another career, if you think that second career is going to solve the problem, it's not going to solve the problem, you're taking those problems with you, you've got to get to the core issues that are causing me to have problems in that first career. And I am I did a whole podcast episode, I think it's called Making decisions from a clear space or coming from a clear space. And in that podcast episode, I essentially talk about how you can get super clear on what the underlying problems are before you make a big decision before you leave a job relationship. So go back and listen to that episode, if that's something that's resonating with you right now. 

Okay, so let's go on here. So the next one is, and I kind of alluded to this one before, is smart entrepreneurs will usually throw money at a problem. So what sometimes happens is, if this is your second career, if this is a side gig, if this is something you're getting started, you might be lucky that you have the privilege to have some sort of income, you already have an income. And what some people do is they're trying so to get results so fast, and they're trying to be successful so quickly, that they think the solution is to throw money at the problem. For example, let me throw money and Google ads or Facebook ads or whatever, because that will get me you know, that will get me paid clients or whatever it is. And again, the big thought error here is, how can I solve this problem as fast as possible? So if that's resonating with you, if you've ever had a thought, like, you know, you've been in business or trying to start a side gig, or you've been thinking about doing it on the side, and you have a thought like how can I solve this problem as fast as possible, I want you to notice that that thought is probably causing you to feel frustrated or annoyed, or the sense of hyper urgency. So when you have that sense of hyper urgency that I want to offer you to always like notice, and I want that to be your Ding ding ding your little bell to tell you hold on a second, I'm coming from an unintentional feeling. 

Remember, there's two types of feelings we can come from intentional feelings, feelings, we think on purpose to help us create results on purpose. Because remember, all of our actions come from our feelings, and our results come from our actions. Or you can be thinking unintentional feelings, feelings that we think by default or from fear. When I'm when I'm feeling afraid, disappointed, frustrated, annoyed, shamed, guilty, hyper urgent, because the feeling of hyper urgency is coming from a fear based response that I have to hurry up to solve this problem. Because if I don't, something might happen, I might fail, I might feel disappointed, I might, whatever. So if this is you notice how hyper urgency feels in your body, how does it feel in your body. And I want you to notice that 99% of the time, again, this is a cue that you're taking an action from an unintentional place, and fear based actions will create fear based results. So you might see a little, you might see some result that you think is a positive result. But it's so whenever you see that when you're taking actions from hyper urgency and you're creating money, I want you to know that you would be creating an exponential amount of money if your result wasn't coming from a fear based response or an unintentional feeling. 

Okay, so another way to think about this, instead of thinking, how can I solve this problem as fast as possible? Another question to think about or maybe even like, a more forwarding question to think is, how can I be more thoughtful about this problem? How can I be more thoughtful about the solution? Or, and here's what I love to ask myself. Now, what is this problem trying to teach me, because as we all know, the universe will teach you a lesson until you have learned it, and it will throw it in your face over and over and over again until you have learned the lesson. And until then, you're going to continue to experience the same problems, it'll just be different flavors of the same exact problem. Until you learn the underlying lesson, you will keep experiencing the same problem. So if you are experiencing the sense of like, let me just fix this problem by throwing money at it. I want you to notice what you're feeling because you're probably avoiding a feeling frustration, annoyance, hyper urgency, and instead what you want to do is you want to think about how can I be more thoughtful about this problem, or what is this problem trying to teach me? Because honestly, you know, in my years of being in the space of entrepreneurship, what I have come to learn is that there really are never any problems in business. There are never any problems in business. 

There are just are portunities to grow from learn and evolve. That's it, which really makes it so much more fun. I have to tell you now when I do something doesn't work. I'm like, oh, man, that's, that's that stank. Alright, well, what's the lesson here? What can I learn? And how can I fix this so it can make it work next time. So notice that, alright, so we said, let's see, we said, you want to get to your results as fast as possible, you're not clear on your priorities, you'll throw money at the problem. Number four, you're not willing to examine and let go of old habits, oh, my gosh, this one that slowed me down so much, not being willing to examine and let go of old habits. Alright, so what are some examples of old habits? So most of you are incredibly smart, you're incredibly hardworking. And one of the biggest sought errs, or old habits that we have is we think that the solution always come when we work harder. So the old habit is that you think working harder is the answer. So you think pushing yourself more, sleeping less putting in more hours, you think that's going to solve the problem. And that, for me, was my very first foray into burnout. 

When I started as an entrepreneur. I remember a few months in, I was working harder than I had been working in my previous career, I was staying up really late, getting up really early, and I was falling back into all of those old habits that had led me into burnout, the very first time I'd experienced it. So I was like, hold on a second, what's happening here? And I was like, oh, here I am, again, thinking that I need to work harder. So the unintentional thought is, what else can I do? What else can I do to solve this problem? What else can I do? Instead of thinking, Who do I need to be? How do I need to show up? How do I need to think differently to solve this problem? Because again, one of the other big truths to entrepreneurship is, if you're coming from another career where you were really successful, or especially if you're coming from medicine, or like law, where to get to be successful, you have to follow a lot of rules, you have to get a lot of straight A's, you have to listen to the teacher, you have to take test in a STEM. 

If that is your background, entrepreneurship is incredibly difficult, because entrepreneurship is the opposite. There is no there, you know, no one's going to reward you for just getting straight A's, no one's gonna reward you for knowing the answer. The only reward comes from trial and error from failing and trying again, failing and trying again. And if you come from a background where failure was punished, failure was shamed, like we did in medicine, for example, or I have some students right now that are that have a background in law, and are starting their own their own businesses. Same thing. They're experiencing the same exact things, because how did we get to where we are, we worked our butts off, we got straight A's, and we did a you know, we made sure that we were excelling and making everybody else proud of us. But an entrepreneurship that is not going to support you in being successful, that habit is going to slow you that F down. Oh, man, I had to learn that the hard way, man, I had to learn that I could no longer rely on any one else is validation on me, I could no longer try to like not fail. In fact, as soon as I learned that lesson that the faster I failed, the more comfortable I got with failing and getting back up again. That's when my business really started to take off and skyrocket. So again, a big, big old habit is working harder will solve the answer. Here's another old habit that a lot of entrepreneurs have slows down a lot of entrepreneurs, perfectionism, thinking that perfection is the key. Oh my gosh, that will shackle you that will put you in a prison that will keep you stuck over and over and over again. So why do we why? Why do we focus on perfection because we're so afraid to be judged? Because we are afraid we have shame around the idea that we might not be perfect, that you know, someone's going to find us out that they're going to find out that we were really just like, not smart enough for whatever it is that you were thinking about yourself. So for me, mine was that I wasn't smart enough. 

So I was always trying so hard to be perfect to prove to people that I was smart enough or that I was successful enough or that I belonged here that I deserved to be here. And I was so afraid to be judged. I was so afraid to fail, because I didn't want to feel rejected or disappointed or any of those types of things. And so I wasted so much time and so much brain space and so much energy trying to be perfect. And perfection is fascinating because there's this there's these diminishing returns on perfection. So if you've ever seen a graph of diminishing returns, essentially what it looks like is do, you know, effort and effort and like your results. So effort is on the x axis results on the Y axis. In the beginning, there's this up sloping graph. So there's this line where you're actually like having pretty good results for your effort. But then when you start letting perfectionism come into play, and you were, for example, wordsmithing, that same email for hours, what you will notice is, the graph starts to plateau, and then the graph will start to downturn, that's diminishing returns. And that's what happens with perfectionism, you can waste so much time. And the more time you waste in perfectionism, the slower your results are, and eventually your, your results will start to downtrend, you won't get results fast enough, and it'll slow down your growth. So one of the things I've also learned that comes sort of along the same lines of perfectionism is one of the biggest things we're afraid to feel is disappointment. 

And again, we think that being perfect is going to keep us from all of these things. But I will tell you right now that in my experience, personal experience, and seeing all of my students do this, that the only thing trying to be perfect guarantees is that you show up in authentic, you do not show up as yourself. And people can sense that inauthenticity. People can sense when you're just showing up trying to like, make a sale or trying to show up and trying to be super smart, or whatever it is, people sense that in authenticity, and in authenticity, will not help you create a solo online business, you might be successful a little bit, but you won't be aligned. And when you're not aligned, even though you're successful, you're gonna feel like something is missing inside, you're gonna feel unfulfilled, unhappy, you're gonna eventually start feeling like a little like Dark Zone inside start to grow. That's what happens within authenticity. The other thing that being perfect will guarantee is that you create more work for yourself that you create more stress, you overwork, and you're overwhelmed. And for a lot of you overwhelm is this sort of like, it's almost like a, a way that we buffer our emotions, like, we're when we're so afraid to take action, we tell ourselves, we're overwhelmed. I just have too many things to do. And then you think the problem is something else, like I'm not disciplined enough, or whatever it is. So notice, that one of those old habits, I said, the first old habit is working hard. 

The second habit is perfectionism, that perfectionism is going to slow down your success 100% of the time. And the last one, the last one kind of goes with his perfectionism, it's not willing to fail. So I talked a lot about failure already. So I will just say this, again, that when I was afraid to fail, and everyone I've worked with, when we're afraid to fail, why do we think we think that we have to do the right thing every time and thinking that you need to do the right thing, every time in entrepreneurship, that is going to just shackle you and paralyze you, it is going to be so hard for you to grow and to do it in a way where you're feeling joy, where you're like enjoying your business. And here's another Newsflash, you can actually enjoy growing a business. It I didn't realize that in my first year of business, I was like, Man, this is hard, but I don't care. I'm gonna keep going. It's hard. It's hard. It's hard. And finally, when I was like, Wait a second, I can let this be easy. I can have fun doing this. And the truth is, yes, you can. And the way you do that is a lot of detachment. But the big one here is you have to detach yourself from this concept of failure. Because what we end up internalizing a lot when we're entrepreneurs, especially early on, is that when we fail, we don't see it as we failed at this one thing, we see it as we are failures, like I am a failure. And that is just like death to the ego. 

The ego hates that. So it'll avoid failure at all times, if you continue to mean that you are a failure. Instead of that one thing failed. You know that one email didn't get as many open rates as you had hoped. Or this one launch didn't get as many signups as you had hoped. So once you're able to detach from that, oh, my gosh, you start failing faster, you start learning faster, and you start succeeding so much faster. So an invitation for all of you is, you know, there's an opportunity here to recreate your relationship with failure. And this isn't something that you do like just to sit into one podcast, unless this is something you've been thinking about for a long time. Maybe this is the one podcast that really takes you over the edge. Really, it comes from just learning and experiencing and doing it over and over again and practicing. 

So you get to recreate your relationship with failure and look at failure instead of like some big scary effort as just an opportunity, an opportunity to learn to learn with curiosity to figure out what works, what doesn't work. You can look at failure as more information. Okay, well, I guess that didn't work. What's next? You can look at it as another lesson life is trying to teach you. And here's one of my favorite things that I do with failure when I fail, and it's a failure that actually feels really like oh my god like an intern. analyze failure, most of my failures now is like, no big deal, whatever, I'll learn, keep going. But once in a while, I'll still fall into that trap where I fail, and it feels horrible. So when that happens to me, that for me is my cue that I have an attachment somewhere that I haven't let go of, what is the attachment? And so I asked myself, What is that attachment? And where else can I be free? Where else can I be free. And that is an invitation for liberation. 

Because honestly, when you create these businesses, one of the most beautiful things is that this business gets to be with you to grow with you to teach you how to continue to evolve, and to actualize this business gets to be just kind of a venue for all of that, and you get to be in service at the same time. And I think we are all on this journey in life to self actualize, but also to learn how to be free, free from other people's judgments from other people's expectations, free from thinking we need to prove ourselves to other people. So when you have those apps, those failures, those losses, whatever you want to call them. If you can see that as an opportunity to learn a lesson life is trying to teach you more information. Or another way for you to ask yourself, Where else can I be free, you will start to fail so much faster, because now you're welcome in the life lessons. And now you just want to keep going and that will just light a fire underneath your results. Alright, I've got one more big mistake that entrepreneurs make. 

And then we will wrap up today's podcast and we will go into next week's podcast. And in next week's podcast, which is really exciting is I get to teach you the three things that you need to create a profitable and sustainable soul aligned and liberated business. Okay, so this last one is really for those of you listening, that are coming from a marginalized identity, a marginalized community, especially if you're a person of color if you're a woman. So if then if this is you, one of the biggest mistakes, one of the biggest reasons that we're slow down that our progress is slow down, is because we subconsciously, some of us, it's even conscious, but for most of us, it's subconscious. You subconsciously believe that success is not possible for you. 

You don't think that that level of success is possible for you. You think that like for me, for example, I thought it was impossible for me because I had this illusion that as a woman, as a brown woman, that I couldn't achieve that level of success in entrepreneurship. I thought entrepreneurship was for white dudes, you know, it's like successful white dudes. And then when I started seeing white women being successful, I was like, Oh, the excuse I made, it's like, it's for white women. And I totally blocked out of my reality, any person of color that I saw making success being successful entrepreneurship, because I had this deep seated belief that it was impossible for me. And this is, this might be a little tricky for some of you. But we are going to create the reality that we believe in our heads. If you kind of envision this kind of like, diamond like a, I would say, kind of like a diamond shape or a hologram, where you're we're inside of your mind is kind of like this hologram of this diamond shape. And inside of that diamond are all the things that you think are possible. 

Those are the things that you think are possible. What ends up happening is the life around you. What's reflected is what's inside of that diamond or that hologram. That's what's reflected outside of you. And so if you don't think it's possible for you to do something, then you're not going to do it. And so for me, even though I wanted so badly to be so successful creating this business, I didn't think it was possible for me. So for my first year, I was working so hard. And yeah, I was making money. And I was but I wasn't achieving the level of success that I wanted. And I was like, Why isn't this happening? Why is it so hard? You know, why am I struggling so much? Why am I so stressed? And honestly, when I peel the onion all the way back? It was because I didn't think it was possible for me. So that might resonate with you? And if it does, I want you to think, who is it possible for? Because once you start seeing those limiting beliefs, you will notice that that is just an illusion. Oh my gosh, every time I think about all of these kind of like thought errors, limiting beliefs, what I now call just illusions, all these illusions I had, I just think it's hilarious. Like, what in the world? Of course, it's possible for me, of course, it's possible for anybody. 

But of course, I thought that because I didn't see a lot of examples like that when I was growing up. And then even if the examples were there, it was still ingrained in my head that I couldn't have it that I didn't even want to make that my reality. Here's the second one. So this this is along the same lines as you don't believe it's possible for you. You think that success is only available for people who have created certain things like, it's only available for them, because their parents are really successful, it's only available for them because they've had all the sponsors, or because they have a stay at home husband or stay at home wife, or it's only available for them because and you create all of these examples. And again, of course, of course, our brains gonna do that, right, the ego is trying to protect us from judging ourselves by making it okay for them to be successful. 

And for us not to be successful. Or you might think that it could be possible for you, but you have to work so much harder than everybody else, you have to really just like work days and nights. And like, it can't be easy for you, for example, where you think needs to take a lot of time, like, okay, maybe it's possible for me, but if I do it, it's gonna take me five years, 10 years, 20 years, or that you need to suffer or you need to sacrifice or you need to burn out first, or you can do it, but you cannot be present for your family and do it or you need to overwork, all of those things that I just mentioned, all of those things are illusions, they're not true, they might be something that you're thinking, but they are not true. If you have not yet taken a leap to create your side gig or your business, or you know, you've started working on it, but you keep pulling back. 

Because you're afraid that it's going to take away some sort of freedom from you like freedom from, like, you know, time away from your family or time to be present with other things, or it's going to make you work harder, or it's not going to give you time to like go out and exercise or surf or whatever it is that you want to do. I want you to notice that that is a limiting belief that in fact is not true. So ask yourself, How is it possible that this could not be true? How could this not be true? Okay, we just talked about a bunch of stuff here. 

So let's do a quick review. We talked about the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make that really slow down their growth and lead to stress and burnout. Number one, they want to get there really fast. Number two, they're not entirely clear on their priorities. And they think that they're trading, you know, they think that they're escaping a problem. But really, what they're doing is they're bringing their problems with them from one career to the next. Number three, they'll throw money at the problem number four, they're not willing to examine and let go of old habits. And those old habits included things like I have to work harder, are working harder is the answer or perfection is key, or I'm not willing to fail. And the last one is you just don't think it's possible for you. Because maybe you're a person of color, maybe you've come from a marginalized identity, maybe you're a woman, and you don't think it's possible for you. 

So those are the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make. So as we wrap up, I want to leave you with a quick exercise a reflection exercise for you, you can get out a journal and journal on this if it's helpful for you. So what I want to do here is I want to offer you an opportunity to examine a subconscious belief, or one of the habits that I just listed off here that really resonates with you. And I want you to think, how is this getting in the way of my success as an entrepreneur, any of the ones I just mentioned? And when you're answering that question for yourself, I want you to first be really specific, be really, really specific, like I gave you some really specific examples how they should at Premier for my students, so be really specific. And then I want to I want you to ask yourself, why do I think this is true? And then what I want you to do is I want you to ask yourself, How will I know when these things are showing up for me? How will it feel in my body? How will I know? How will I know next? And this is showing up? Like what is what what is it that I'm thinking? What is it that I'm feeling? And how does that feel in my body. 

And the reason why I want you to do that is from this small exercise that I just gave you, you can create a moment of awareness and shift your mind so that when you are in these, these mistakes that people make that smart entrepreneurs make, you can actually shift yourself from there to a place of intentionality. Okay, sweet friends, we are going to wrap up the podcast. I really hope you enjoyed today's episode. Remember that if you have a side gig or a business that you want to get off the ground, and you are really struggling with taking action, or maybe you're taking action, but you're catching yourself really stressed and burned out, I can help you create a profitable, sustainable automated business. So if this is you, then I want to invite you to enroll in my business accelerator mastermind. 

The waitlist is in the shownotes right now of this podcast episode. So click on that link you can you'll be taken to the waitlist page, you can read more about the program there and you can join the waitlist. And once you join the waitlist you will be the first to know when enrollment opens. And we will only an open enrollment for just a few days because we are only taking a max of 10 people into this first cohort because I want it to be really small really intimate, because you're gonna get a combination of one on one direct one on one In coaching with me, and you're also going to get group didactics and teachings where I'm going to be teaching you exactly what you need to do step by step so that you can grow your business you can make it profitable and sustainable. Alright sweet friends, I will see you in the next episode of yours.

Hey, sweet friends, if you love what you're learning, then you've got to join us in the journey. It's my all inclusive program and the best community out there giving you the education you never knew you needed to help you create a life you love. Join us at Vanessa Calderon md.com forward slash join. I'll see you there.