236: I Built the Business I Wanted, So Why Do I Feel Like Quitting?

Welcome to the She Thinks Big! Podcast. Get ready to level up your thinking and expand your horizons. I’m your host, Andrea Liebross, your guide on this journey of big ideas and bold moves. I am the best-selling author of She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary.

I support women like you with the insights and mindset you need to think bigger and the strategies and systems you need to turn that thinking into action and make it all a reality. Are you ready to stop thinking small and start thinking big? Let’s dive in.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the She Thinks Big podcast. And I shouldn't just say my friends, I should say big thinkers, because if you're listening to this podcast—and I would love to know where are you listening to this podcast, by the way. Are you driving? Are you walking? Are you emptying the dishwasher? Are you folding laundry? What are you doing?—if you're listening, then you are on to the fact that you need to think bigger about things, but you also need to take bigger action.

Now, I want to kick off this episode with a question that I know has probably passed through your brain at least once, probably at 11.47 PM while you're lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, or maybe at 6.47 AM on a Monday morning when you're waking up that says, you've asked yourself, "Okay, I've kind of built this business, this business I said I wanted. People know I have this business, so why do I feel like quitting? Or why do I feel like throwing in the towel? Or why does this feel so hard?" And if you're someone that's asked those questions, then this episode is for you because you've probably hit some revenue goals. You have clients coming through the door.

You have clients or customers that adore you most of the time. You've even upgraded your systems. And yet, you're, as my daughter would say, low-key fantasizing about burning it all down and becoming a dog walker in the Swiss Alps.

Or as I used to say to my husband, "Can I just be the mailman and have like a nine-to-five job?" Or if you're my mailman, it's like 9:00 to 7:00 PM. Our mail comes at 7:00 PM. Or, "Can I just go work at Target or be a Starbucks barista?" I mean, yes, I own my own business, but going to work for someone else seems a whole lot easier. And if you're asking this question, you're not crazy, nor are you ungrateful, because that's another thing I think that passes through our heads.

Like, "I should be grateful for all the things I have." You're just at the part of the movie or you're in the chapter of your business where external success has kind of outpaced the internal support that you're giving yourself. And today what we're going to do in this episode is we are unpacking this very real and very common moment in your business owner journey.

Because what you actually need isn't a new business. You don't need to throw it all out the window. You don't need a new job at Starbucks.

What you need is a new mindset that matches or that aligns the business you've built. Okay? So you don't need a new business. You don't need a new job.

You probably don't even need too many new things in the business. You just need a new mindset, right? Because what's happening externally isn't matching what's happening internally. So let's get into it.

Part one of this episode, your business isn't broken. Your brain is just tired. Okay? So here's what I see over and over with my clients.

You build the business that you want. You hustle, you scale, you optimize, and then one day you wake up and think, "I can't keep doing this." I've thought this, okay? You're not alone. I've thought this.

And when I go deeper into it, the business isn't broken. Okay, nothing's gone wrong. I'm sure you've heard me say that on this podcast before.

Nothing's gone wrong. It's just that your brain is exhausted. You've been operating under the mental model that more success will create more freedom.

Or if I just hit one more milestone, then I'll finally feel calm when this happens then. Or you might've been operating under busy. Being busy equals valuable.

But here is what no one tells you, or at least here's what no one reminds you, even if they've told you before. You can build a thriving business that still feels like a trap. Because the trap isn't in the numbers, it's in your thoughts.

All right, and here's a fun fact, because I did a little research on this. Did you know that three out of five entrepreneurs report feeling burned out, even when their business is financially successful? And that's because burnout doesn't come from effort. It comes from, I'm going to call it unsustainable beliefs, running on a loop in your head.

Okay, so three out of five entrepreneurs report feeling burnt out, even when they have financial success. Burnout's a feeling, right? It's created by our thoughts. As much as you want to try to argue with me that it's created by facts, it's created by our thoughts.

And it really comes from some unsustainable beliefs running on a loop in your head. So let's get clear here, okay? Mindset, or having the right thoughts, or staying in the right headspace is not about being in a bubble bath. It is not about mantras.

It is not about getting like, um, it's not about any of that. It's really daily recalibration, okay? So it is not a sticky note on the bathroom mirror. It's not lighting a candle and repeating affirmations while your Slack is blowing up.

Mindset is kind of this invisible operating system that drives how you make decisions, drives how you handle challenges, and how you interpret your own success. So a lot of times we talk about operating systems. Mindset is the invisible operating system.

Isn't that good? I think I should put that into a quote. Mindset is the invisible operating system that drives your business. Because here's the kicker, success can trigger just as much anxiety as failure.

So there's a part in my book in chapter two where I talk about fear of success, and success can trigger just as much anxiety as failure.

Why, you might ask me. Why, Andrea, why? Because here's the reason, because once you've "made it," now you actually do have something to lose. Once you've made it, you now actually do have something to lose.

And here's a fun fact that I uncovered. Nearly 49%, so that's almost half, literally half of female entrepreneurs say that managing their emotional and mental wellbeing is their number one personal challenge. Managing their emotional and mental wellbeing is their number one personal challenge.

Not their physical wellbeing, their mental wellbeing. And I think that's because you've got strategy, you've got spreadsheets. You kind of know what to do, but what you don't know what to do or how to do it, what you need is a better relationship with your own thoughts. So have you ever thought about your thoughts as a thing that you need to have a relationship with? We talk about relationships with people, relationships with our pets, relationships with yourself, which is kind of another way of saying you need a better relationship with your own thoughts.

Second point I want to make here. Mindset is really the most important operating system that you need to have as a business owner. And mindset requires daily recalibration, just like a system needs recalibration. Mindset is about having a better relationship with your own thoughts.

The third point I want you to take away from this episode is, you don't need a new strategy to help you not want to burn down the business or quit. You don't need a new strategy; you need new self-talk. You need new self-talk. So let me say this as plainly as possible.

You don't need to hire a funnel strategist. You don't need to redo your brand colors. You don't need to go live in a yurt.

Have you ever been in a yurt? They're kind of cool, but you don't need to go live in a yurt. What you need is to change the way you talk to yourself. You need to learn to separate your thoughts from the facts.

You need to stop believing everything, every story your brain offers you. And you need to shift from self-doubt to self-leadership. You need to lead yourself, just like you lead your kids, just like you lead your team. Are you leading yourself?

All right, now let's talk about what that might look like. As much as I love ChatGPT—and you know I do—ChatGPT cannot teach you how to rewire your internal dialogue.

It can write affirmations. It can suggest journaling prompts, but it can't sit across from you and say, "That thought, it's not true. Let's challenge it." It doesn't try to buck the system.

It only bucks the system if you ask it to. So any of these AI tools, they're not asking you great questions. ChatGPT is not able to do that. You need yourself to ask yourself the questions. You need another human to ask yourself the questions.

Now, while we're on this topic of self-talk, I'm not talking about needing therapy either. Therapy's powerful.

I've got plenty of episodes on the difference between therapy or counseling and coaching, and we'll link some of those in the show notes. Therapy's powerful. It's about healing and processing the past, but mindset coaching or being able to ask yourself the right questions, or having someone ask you the right questions to help you improve your self-talk, that's what I do. And what I do is different than therapy.

It's different from ChatGPT. Mindset coaching is about how you move forward right now with clarity, with energy, and grounded in that self-trust.

In fact, I'm going to share with you a personal example of me not needing a new strategy, of me just needing new self-talk. So, a couple of weeks ago, I won, or my partner, Megan and I, won net champion in the member-guest golf tournament at Holliday Farms in Zionsville, Indiana. Now, this was big. I had never entered a golf tournament, number one. So that's kind of number one.

I had never entered a golf tournament, I'm going to be honest. But I've been practicing. So I entered, I asked my friend Megan to be my guest, and we won net champion, and we came in second in gross.

So, I can explain what that all means later. But this was kind of a big deal to me, at least. It was a big deal.

And the reason we won was not because I hit the longest drive. It was not because I had the least number of putts. I really believe the reason that we won was because I stayed in the zone. I stayed in a zone of self-talk, as a mindset zone, that led me to continue to perform my best. It was one swing at a time.

It was keeping my head clear. It was not spiraling, if one stroke was off, or if I went in the water, which I did, I hit the ball in the water even. I just had to stay in the zone of one stroke at a time.

And there's even, back to the research, there are studies that show that when a golfer's partner starts playing poorly, their own performance drops. So if my partner, yes, Megan was my partner, but my bigger partner was my own brain. So if my brain partner starts to play poorly, then my performance is going to drop.

That's how contagious energy and mindset really are. If Megan started to play poorly, I started to play poorly. If I was playing poorly, she started to play poorly.

But the same was true of when we were playing really well, and we played really well for the vast majority of all those 18 holes, all five plus hours of them. So mindset and performance, energy and mindset, it's like contagious. It's contagious. So you need better self-talk when you feel like quitting. It is not about needing a better strategy.

All right, here's the fourth thing I want you to remember. Who you surround yourself with matters more than you think. And that's just not true in golf. You want to surround yourself with better players, right? It's true in business.

Mindset is contagious. So if you're surrounded by people who are overwhelmed, reactive, are constantly second-guessing themselves, guess what's going to happen to you? That's going to seep into your decisions, in your confidence, in your self-talk. But when you surround yourself with ambitious, high-caliber women who are navigating their businesses, are navigating their success with intention versus anxiety, you're going to start to think differently.

You're going to start to operate differently. You're going to start to lead differently. And get this, another fun fact, people are 95% more likely to reach a goal when they're surrounded by others pursuing the same thing.

95%, now that's not a soft suggestion. That in and of itself is a strategy. You are 95% more likely to reach a goal when you're surrounded by others pursuing the same thing.

So that is a strategy. Who are you surrounding yourself with? When I go back, go back and listen to my episode about group coaching. That is why I include group coaching in all of the coaching that I offer, because I think the things that happen when you put women in a room who are committed to not burning their businesses down, but instead to leading them with more clarity and more power and more peace, that's when things happen.

So that is why this community piece is so important to me. That's why I myself am in a community of women who are ambitious and who are growing businesses. And that's why you're going to see a little bit of tweaking to my programs coming up in the next few months.

I'm tweaking the names of some of my coaching programs. And my mastermind, for example, here's a sneak peek. I'm going to start to call it the Ascension Collective, because the women in there are ascending, and we have created a collective of women and resources and coaching modalities to support them.

At our last retreat, I did what I'm now calling, at least my Google Doc is called White Chair Commentary. So in one of the rooms in my home where I held the retreat, there's a white chair, and I had the women sit down in this white chair and my videographer kind of interviewed them. And one thing, here's a comment that came out of the mouths of one of the people there.

She said, "I thought I was the only one feeling stuck, even though everything looks successful on paper. But over the past two days, being at this retreat, inside this room with these other women, I realized I'm not broken. I realized I'm not alone anymore."

Knowing that, so powerful. And someone else shared, "This retreat reminded me that I actually like what I've built. I just need help feeling like the leader of it again."

Okay, those comments, "I like what I've built, I just need help feeling like the leader of it again," that's what happens when you're in this room with the right people. That right there is the shift.

You don't need to start over. You just need to reconnect to the version of you that knows how to lead what you've already built. Yeah.

Here's your homework. Take five quiet minutes today. No notifications, no tabs open. No TV and ask yourself these four questions: What story am I telling myself about my business right now? So question number one, what story am I telling myself about my business right now? What is the tape you're playing in your head? What is that?

Number two, do I feel like the CEO of the business I've built or the employee? I want you to write these answers down too and share them with me. Message me on Instagram.

Tell me your answers.

Here's the third question. What would the calm, clear, grounded version of you believe about this exact situation?

And then finally, the fourth question, who am I surrounding myself with? Are they pulling me forward or dragging me into doubt? And I will tell you that last question, I have to reassess that often.

Like, who am I surrounding myself with? And are my old friends or the friends that I've been with and had forever and ever, are they pulling me forward, or are they dragging me into doubt? Are they just commiserating with me, or are they lifting me up? Who are you surrounding yourself with? So write those answers down. Get honest with yourself. No judgment, just awareness.

No judgment, just awareness. Because that is where mindset work starts, with awareness, not hustle. Mindset work starts with awareness and not hustle.

So this podcast, I hope that it helps you bring awareness to some of the things happening in your own brain and in your business. And I want you to know that you've built something incredible. I already know that about you if you're listening to this.

And you're not ungrateful if you have these thoughts of like, "Oh my gosh, should I quit? Or I need to go work at Starbucks." You're just evolving. And what that might tell you, those thoughts might tell you, it might be time for your mindset to evolve with you.

Like, it's lagging behind. And if it's lagging behind, if you're noticing that that's what's dragging you down, if this mindset is lagging behind, reach out. Reach out to me.

If this episode hits home, reach out to me. Send it to someone who you think it might hit home with too. Better yet, the next best step than just listening and creating awareness is to actually take some action.

Schedule a call with me. Let's talk about it. This kind of thing is exactly what we will explore on our call.

It's exactly what we dive even deeper into in all of my coaching programs. And side note, sneak peek, this Ascension Collective, it's really a high-touch coaching experience for you. The woman who's done with like white knuckling her way through growth and who wants to move into that true CEO energy.

And yes, ChatGPT can give you ideas. Therapy can help you process the past, but mindset coaching, that's what keeps you in the game when the stakes are high and the pressure's on. The mindset is what keeps you in the game because when you're Googling, "What's wrong with my business or should I close it down?" when you're tempted to burn it all down, that's not because your business is broken, it's that your mindset hasn't caught up with your success.

So this is the thing. Has your mindset caught up with your success? No tool, no template, no system can fix that, but I will bet you money that a room full of women who've been there, who are going through it with you, and a coach who knows how to help you rewire your brain, that can help you catch up.

And like another woman said on the retreat, "I don't need to do more. I just need to think differently. And when I do that, it changes everything."

So you don't need to quit. You don't need to start over. You just need to think a little bit bigger and a little bit differently.

Okay, my friends, let's shift this awareness that the podcast gives you into some action. Go schedule a call with me. Go to andreaslinks.com. Hit the schedule a call button.

Let's chat. I guarantee you that even on that call, which is at no cost to you, you will walk away with a mindset shift. All right, my friends, I'll see you next week. Keep thinking big. Keep taking some big action. I'm here for all of it. See you soon.

Thanks for tuning into the She Thinks Big! Podcast. If you're ready to learn the secret to unleashing your full potential, don't forget to grab a copy of my book, She Thinks Big: The Entrepreneurial Woman's Guide to Moving Past the Messy Middle and Into the Extraordinary. It's available on Amazon and at your favorite bookstore.

And while you're there, grab a copy for a friend. Inside, you'll both find actionable strategies and empowering insights to help you navigate the complexities of entrepreneurship and life, and step confidently into your extraordinary future.

If you found value in today's episode, please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. And if you're ready to take this learning a step further and apply it to your own business and life, head to andreaslinks.com and click the button to schedule a discovery call. Until next time, keep thinking big.