You Are Not Your Business: Why Your Identity Is Costing You Deals

I scrapped the episode I had planned this week because the same question kept coming up on multiple  coaching calls this week. 

"Who am I, if this business doesn't work out?"

I know that sounds like a mindset guru thing, but stick with me, because getting this wrong is quietly costing you sales calls, and getting it right will change how you show up in your business completely. 

Head to suzieconsoli.com if you want to talk through where you're getting stuck.

Transcript

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I had a totally different episode planned to release this week and I scrapped it because this idea kept coming up on my coaching calls today. And I feel like it's too important to just walk away from. It's been on my mind, it's been on my heart. And I'd like to share it with you because I hope that not only does it help you make more money, but I hope that it also helps you live with some more freedom. Today I had a handful of back-to-back-to-back calls. And on each of them, the idea of identity kept getting brought up. It was this what do people think is valuable about me? What does this mean about who I am as a business owner, as a person? What will my team think? What will my friends think? And it kept coming back to who am I? was kind of the central question. All different types of problems, all different types of circumstances, business types, all different types of feelings. I mean, you name it, these calls could not have been more different, other than the fact that these clients were coming back to this question over and over again of who am I? What does this mean about me as a business owner? How does this impact what people will think about me, et cetera? Before you tune me out and you're like, this is another mindset guru thing. I promise you by the end of this episode, what I'm going to tell you about your identity is going to help you close more sales calls. If you can get through your head that you do not have to wrap your identity up in your business, you will close more deals. So stick with me. One small caveat before we dive in. Some of the things we're going to talk about on today's episode start to creep into the territory of counseling and mindset and some of that work. And I always like to say off the bat, I am not a therapist, I am not a counselor. There are amazing professionals who can help you work through this and have really deep conversations with you. My goal is to bring up topics to help you unpack some of this, to walk through the day-to-day of your business with you so that you can be more profitable and enjoy your business again, finding that freedom. A lot of times we have to have hard conversations along the way. And this is one of them: finding your identity as a business owner, figuring out what this means in your life. I am here for the hard conversations. I am here to walk through this with you. I am so happy to be a sounding board, but I always like to have a caveat of but once we start to get into your past and unpacking trauma and things like that, I always recommend seeking out a mental health professional who can walk through this on a much deeper level with you. That said, I'd like to share a little bit of my personal story today around identity and hopefully encourage you to move more out of strength and not fear. And hopefully this will have a positive impact on the bottom line of your business. It did for me. Let's start by defining what an identity is. Now, there's a lot of things that get brought up with this in a lot of different corners of the internet. The way we're going to talk about it today is how you think about yourself and what you believe makes you valuable and worth loving. I believe that part of the human experience is having to wrestle through this issue, trying to figure out what makes people like me, what makes people want to be my friend, what makes people want to do business with me. This is something that we all wrestle with. And so many of us get confused on what our identity is and what we're good at. There's no one who struggles with this more than teenagers. And that was true for me. When I was 14 years old, my parents forced me to go out for the cross-country team for my brand new school. Now, I was not a sporty kid at the time. I had tried out for some musical theater stuff. I was kind of beep bopping around whatever felt fun, whatever felt interesting in the moment, whatever was on Disney Channel. So I'm awkward, I'm lanky. I had grown eight and a half inches in eight months between eighth grade and freshman year. So I had some height on my side. And I went out for the team, tried out, did their time trial. Cross-country tryouts are basically, they say, go, and you run around a park as fast as you can. I ended up doing pretty well. Um, if you're a runner, you know that seven minute miles, you're pushing it, but no one's like, oh my gosh, this girl's gonna be D1. And if you're not a runner, you're like, oh my gosh, you're probably an Olympian. So I was medium to good, right? Somewhere in there. No one was like, oh my gosh, Susie's breaking records. But it was probably the most athletic thing I had done ever in my life. I end up making varsity, which in a school of 2,000 kids, it was a really big school. It was a really big deal. Varsity got a different colored sweatshirts, they had different uniforms. All the varsity kids dated each other. I was in a different stratosphere. And so, like every 14-year-old who has had low to medium success at anything, I decided that this was who I was. I was going to be a runner. I was going to make this my entire personality. This was what I was born to do. I became obsessed with it because all of a sudden I had friends, I had success, I had acceptance. And I decided that being a runner was my new identity. Now, stakes are pretty low when you're 14. Everybody has something that they decide is their thing. And being a cross-country runner definitely isn't the worst thing you can pick when you're 14. But we've all known those people that get wrapped up in what they were really good at when they were in high school, and they talk about it or college, and they talk about it like if I could only go back, if I could only relive those glory days, that would be amazing. And my dad didn't want that for me. My dad and I run together a lot, we still do. Um, and one day we were on a run together, and he said, you know, I've been thinking about this, and I just don't want you to think of yourself as a runner. You're not a runner, you're a girl who runs. This, who you are, is so much bigger than what you're currently doing. What you do is not your identity. And this stuck with me for years. I often think about the fact that I am not a runner, I am a girl who runs. I am not a business owner, I'm a girl who's running a business. I am not a business coach. I'm a girl who coaches people. I am so much more than what I currently am finding success in. I'll give you one more example of this, um, something that stuck with me in the same vein. I had a therapist one time. I was venting to her and I was telling her, I'm so anxious. I'm so scared. I'm so worried about this. And she stopped me. She held up her hand and she said, You are not anxious. You're feeling anxious. You are not scared. You're feeling scared. Same idea. You're not scared. You're a girl who's feeling scared. You are not a runner, you're a girl who runs. This idea of just because I'm feeling a certain way doesn't mean that this is who I am. I am not anxiety. I'm feeling anxious, but I can put that down. I can move on. I can say, I recognize that I'm feeling this way, but it's not who I am. I'm not going to be defined by this. So if your identity is not what you do or how you feel, what actually is an identity? Many of us grab on to, like I said, what we've had success at or what we haven't. We define ourselves by our failures. Or maybe we just decide how I feel is who I am. I struggled with this and struggled with my self-worth with this with Lost in House for such a long time, even with a great therapist and great parents in my corner. I believed that people wouldn't like me anymore if I wasn't running the agency. I worried that my own husband wouldn't see me in the same way because somewhere along the line, I had convinced myself that being a successful business owner was the actual reason people liked me. When I started seriously considering selling lost in house, I told my husband I didn't think that I could actually step away from it. I said, this is how people know me. This is what makes them trust me. I'm able to help people, this is what makes me valuable. I dressed it up as something super noble, like I'm helping all these people, but underneath it, the real question was just, what if this is what makes people like me? What if this is what makes me worth loving? He's known me since high school. Um, he has watched every version of me: the side bangs, the dark eyeliner, the I'm gonna be a backpacker and stop wearing shoes phase, the corporate era pencil skirt phase. And he said something to me that I still think is the kindest thing anybody has ever said to me. He said, Lost in house or not, I know who you are. And I don't even think you've peaked yet. I don't think this is gonna be the coolest thing you'll do. I don't think people are going to say, Oh, Susie, remember when she used to run Lost in House? He's like, I see so much more ahead for your future. And I think you've got so much more ahead of you. I don't think you've had your last best idea yet. I think you need to create space for what's all to come and all the new things that you want to build. This gave me permission to actually go and consider other things. What if I started another business? What if I'm good at something I haven't even tried yet? There's so much freedom to be found in deciding I'm a girl running a business, not a business owner. This separation, this boundary to put in place with your identity is so important because it's going to free you up. Here's what happens when your identity gets fused to your business. The business doesn't fail anymore, you fail. The ad campaign didn't underperform, you underperformed. And on the flip side, you start taking way too much credit for the wins and way too much blame for the losses. If the business has a slow month, all of a sudden you feel like you've got to answer to all these people. You're not likable anymore. You've let this imaginary group of people down. It feels embarrassing for some reason. Now, I'm not saying, hey, nothing else matters. Just show up, don't set goals. Obviously, if you've listened to this podcast for a while, you know that I am extremely ambitious. I love setting goals. I love shooting for the moon. I love big revenue. But the thing is, when that's all you have, that's a really lonely place to end up. Everything moves in seasons, and we have so much less control than we thought. We all just live through a whole global season where the stuff that mattered didn't matter overnight. My identity is not in my business. My identity is in my faith, in my marriage, and trying to live with integrity and being a good mom, a good sister, a good daughter, being someone who's creative and generous with my time. I could go to work for a completely different job tomorrow and still be all of those things. None of that disappears if the business changes shape, slows down, or it ends. I get to be who I'm meant to be, no matter what the setting, what I'm doing, where I'm finding success. It doesn't mean don't go be ambitious, but it gives me the freedom to go and chase what my heart is drawn towards, where I feel like I'm being called. If you are white knuckling this, or you are gripping your identity as an entrepreneur or a content creator or an agency owner, like it's the only thing holding you together. I want you to ask yourself what happens when that thing changes, because it will. Nothing stays the same forever. Trends go outdated, you retire, or honestly, you just wake up one day and you don't want to do it anymore. I'm not telling you to build some giant contingency plan. I'm asking how much of your business would actually benefit if you started operating from an I have to and started operating from I don't have to. I get to do this, I get to show up. This is my job. But there's so many things that I'm going to be in this life. Okay, I told you in the beginning that I was going to tie all this mindset stuff back to making more money and helping you grow your business, which is the purpose of this podcast. And there's two ways getting clear on your identity will help you grow your business. Number one, your sales calls. If you get on a sales call believing your entire worth depends on closing it, you are going to come across as panicky, desperate. We have all been on the other side of that call, and it is not a good look. People are drawn to confidence. They're drawn to people who know who they are outside of the outcome of that one call. This isn't life or death. Go into your sales calls knowing if this person says no, I'm still a really good friend. I'm still have so much to offer. I still have a great business that I'm running. Somebody closing this deal, somebody signing this contract does not determine my worth overall. When you, I know that sounds really dramatic, but when you go into a sales call, knowing that regardless of what they say, you operate from a place of strength, you are going to come across more confident. And people like doing business with people who are confident. When you stop fusing your identity to the outcome, you stop taking every no so personally. Someone says no, it's not because you're not enough. It's not because you're not worthy. It's because they're a human making a decision with the information and priorities that they have that day. Sometimes people, the budget just doesn't work out. Sometimes they're too busy. Sometimes they'd rather take their spouse to Mexico than buy your course. And that is not a referendum on your worth. The second way this will help you in your business and help you make more money is you're going to stop making decisions from a place of fear. I mentioned this a minute ago, but you are going to start operating from a place of strength, confidence. You want to show up on these sales calls with confidence, but you also want to lead your team with confidence. You want to make decisions with confidence. We talked about all kinds of stuff on this podcast, setting bigger goals, when to hire somebody, when to give a refund, when to bring on more clients, when to fire clients, when to start doing outreach, all of these things, knowing when to make the next move, knowing when to aim for a bigger goal, knowing how you should grow the business in the next way. If you are operating from a place of, well, I really want people to like me, well, I promised my Instagram followers I would do XYZ, you are going to drive yourself absolutely crazy and start making all of these decisions from a place of deep insecurity instead of a place from someone who knows who they are and knows that at the end of the day, it's just business. When I started operating from a place of being, I am not a business owner. I am a girl who's running a business. It gave me the freedom to make better decisions, not only for myself and for my family, but for my team, for my clients. I started seeing better results for my clients. I started closing way more deals. I started saying no to things I should say no to. I started getting more of my time back. And I started feeling less crazy. I stopped operating from a place of, I'm so anxious, and started operating from a place of, I'm feeling anxious, but I'm still going to make better decisions today. I'm still going to put on my big girl pants and get this done because I know I'm going to feel better once I get into the groove. I'm going through a moment right now. I'm going through, I'm feeling scared, but I'm deciding that I'm going to move through that feeling and pursue something better because I know where my identity is rooted in. I know who I am. And I don't need to always be proving myself or trying to live or die on the success of this business. If this is something you feel like you are struggling with, if you're finding yourself getting caught up in an identity cycle of what you do, your success, or how you feel, I would love to talk with you about that. It's something that I help my clients with. It's something that I just sit with them in and talk with them about how they're going to move through this. Not necessarily from a place of, hey, let's dig into your deep trauma, but how do you put together an actionable plan to run your business well, to put boundaries in place that help remind you of who you are deep down so that you can operate your business from a place of strength. If you are looking for somebody to help you do that, I would love to schedule a call with you, hear your story, and share some of mine as well. This is really hard stuff. This is something that you'll spend the rest of your life battling, but you don't need to battle it alone. You can go susiecoli.com to schedule a call with me. I would love to chat with you, hear your story, tell you some of mine. Friends, thank you for listening to this episode. Until next time, sell well.