Ep 45: Trust Series: Mastering Self-Trust - The Entrepreneur's Voyage to Decision-Making Confidence

Have you ever stood at the crossroads of a crucial business decision, your heart pounding with the weight of potential outcomes?

In this enlightening episode of "The Entrepreneur's Voyage," I dive deep into the heart of entrepreneurship—where the battle between self-doubt and self-trust unfolds. I share not just my own journey of building an event stationery design business from the ground up but also the collective wisdom of fellow entrepreneurs who've faced their fears and emerged victorious.

Since starting my company in 2009 and alongside pursuing an MBA, I've learned that the cornerstone of success isn't just about making the right decisions, but trusting in them. Join us as we uncover the secrets of self-trust that every entrepreneur needs to wield like a sword in their quest for success.

Here are three captivating takeaways from this confidence-building episode:

1. The Power of Niche Focus: Discover how a pivotal moment of clarity helped me understand the importance of focusing on a niche market, transforming my wedding stationery business by attracting aligned clients. This story isn't just mine; it's a guiding light for anyone looking to carve their unique path in the entrepreneurial landscape.

2. Overcoming Overwhelm with Serenity: Learn about the method that has enabled me and many others to navigate through the stormy seas of business tasks with grace and serenity. This personal invitation to discover tranquility amidst chaos is a must-listen for those feeling burdened by entrepreneurial challenges.

3. Aha Moments that Transform: Be inspired by the transformative 'aha moments' from my journey and those of our special guests. Each story is a testament to the incredible strength found in perseverance and the life-changing power of trusting oneself.

Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just embarking on your journey, this episode is a beacon of hope and inspiration. Prepare to be inspired and to arm yourself with the invaluable tool of self-trust.

Don't let another moment pass in uncertainty. Join us on this journey of transformation and empowerment. Your path to success is not just about making decisions—it's about believing in them.

How to Work with Nikisha (Your Certified Business & Life Coach):

Six months from now, would you like your business to be unrecognizable?
Schedule a FREE consult to learn about THE SOLOPRENEUR INITIATIVE! A 1:1 private coaching six-month program for solopreneurs who want to:

• Managing Work-Life Stress
• Finding Your Direction with a Clear Plan
• Developing Confidence in Your Numbers
• Finding Fulfilment in Your Brand

Check out our content on Instagram > NK Focus Formula

Chapters

• 0:20 Building Trust as a Business Owner
• 9:28 Building Self-Trust and Vision
• 21:23 Transformative Aha Moments Podcast Opportunity

Transcript

Nikisha King: 0:20

Welcome to Nikisha King Podcast, leading her way, where we see the human, evolving and resilient spirit in you. I'm your host, Nikisha, and today we are starting the Trust Series. Now this series is so impactful. It's impactful because of what it means to trust yourself as a business owner.

Nikisha King: 0:45

In 2009, when I started my business, it was something I kind of thought about doing, but there was really no build up to that moment. Right, I wasn't, since 2000, thinking about starting my business. There was just frustration. In my current job I don't call it, it is corporate, it's in a hospital, nonprofit but the frustration there allowed me, or helped me, come up with the idea of starting my own company. Now, that means there wasn't any planning. There was just pain, frustration and I just jumped into it. There had to have been a moment where I said I trust myself to do it. That comes from everything I endured prior to making that decision. That came from my journey of wanting to be a physician, studying when I was so determined to get only A's in my pre-med program and accomplishing that. I knew how to trust myself. I was building trust with myself. As time went on. I just assumed that I can do something. It's weird because, even though I assumed I can do something, I trusted myself. I always questioned myself. I questioned if I can achieve all of the things I'm thinking about. As time kept going and I started to look at life a little bit differently, trusting myself became one of my most genuine gifts to myself.

Nikisha King: 2:20

I want to take you on a journey about trusting yourself as a parent, as a business owner, as a human being or a spiritual being having a human experience. I want to talk more about that amongst business owners that I'm going to introduce you to, and how they trust themselves. Do they still trust themselves or do they question it? Understand questioning if you're capable of something is so normal. It's normal because we all have hesitations about doing something. The question is, how do we keep moving forward even when we are not trusting or we're feeling like this is really uncomfortable? That's what I'm going to get into for this trust series. I would like to introduce you to my journey of trust.

Nikisha King: 3:14

Like I said, 2009, I started my business. When I started my business, I had no clue what I was trying to do. I didn't understand what a business was. I did go to school for my masters and I was doing that while I had my business 2008, 2009,. They were the same starting points, like right close to each other.

Nikisha King: 3:35

I was enjoying the business world as doing my MBA, but it didn't get me ready. It got me ready, but not as ready as I am today. That is because I had to practice the work. The theory is amazing, the knowledge is amazing, but if I don't practice it and have those moments of frustration and learning, then I didn't really understand what I was doing. In 15 years that has come to me.

Nikisha King: 4:07

So I've done so many things when it came to education, getting the knowledge, the practicing, learning how to stick with it, how to keep moving, how to pivot. And in doing all of that, that's where my trust for myself came into play. You have done so many things in your life, your journey, the things that made you uncomfortable, that felt hard, the moments when you wanted to give up. Those were all trust building activities, because when you got to the other end of it, that's when you realize what you were capable of. And when you get to that point and you realize what you're capable of, it helps you build trust with yourself to know what you can do as a CEO.

Nikisha King: 4:55

There are moments where and it's not current because I'm gonna share how currently I do things but in my past, where I would question everything. And the reason I question everything is because I didn't trust myself to do the activity. So, for example, I had, at one moment, invested in a company to build an e-commerce website for me. I didn't know how much this was gonna take money, time, resources. I didn't know what the plan was in using this website and not having any direction, any know it of what I'm doing, why I'm doing, I spent over $20,000 on this website. This was in the beginning of my business.

Nikisha King: 5:43

This was pretty much when, four years, in five years in, because I thought this was the thing I needed and in that moment of trying to build this website, the company I hired was doing amazing. They were teaching me because I would ask questions, I would do things with them and in that moment, since I didn't know where I was going, I didn't have any decisions. I wasn't really great at making decisions because I didn't trust myself to make a decision. So I would constantly ask for things and show them things that were broken, but I really wasn't being fear at that moment in time. I didn't know this. This is hindsight, because I didn't know where I was going.

Nikisha King: 6:28

I didn't trust myself that I can achieve this e-commerce website. I, before hiring them, I knew how to build e-commerce but it was so shabby, it was like piecemilled and with hiring them, they can make it a beautiful and it was at that time logento community, that's what I used. They can make it flawless for me, but they couldn't really make it anything because in that moment in time I didn't know what it was and I didn't trust myself to know what it was because I didn't believe I had the information to know it all to build this e-commerce website. And it was looking at it. Today I look at a historical archive website and I can see it. I could see pieces of it. It was amazing, but in that moment in time I didn't know that because I didn't trust myself to know that, I didn't trust that I can do it and, trusting that, I wasn't able to do it. Guess what? I didn't do it.

Nikisha King: 7:21

I did fail, and when I say fail, I had to take it down and that 25,000 never returned. Well, it never came back because I never used the website, so it was never returned to me in that way. But I had to look at it and learn that. In that time, I learned how to build websites e-commerce, my website. I designed my websites. I know the framework, the wireframe, I know the terminology. So that 25,000 investment was an education for me of building and understanding the foundation of websites, which was pretty cool when I looked at it that way, because it took a while in understanding or even reframing it to see it in that light. The light I saw before. That was failure, complete waste of money, more debt. All of the negative things you can think of is what I did or said to myself when I didn't trust myself. Thank you Now.

Nikisha King: 8:20

When I went through my transformation in 2021, understanding how to move from a scarce thinking or a scarce mindset that scarce mindset was the result of thinking about I got myself into debt. I failed. All the negative words. When I did the transformation to an abundance, aka growth, mindset, I was able to see things differently. Trusting myself became easier. I was able to learn how to do something, make a decision, do something and keep moving forward. And it was uncomfortable. And when I started the transition being uncomfortable, was me or my subconscious going Nikisha, you're doing something new and it feels really uncomfortable. You should stop, and I would come up with excuses to stop myself. And that was a part of not trusting myself, because what I would do is how I would justify this is. If I don't trust myself, I would think of all the possibilities of me feeling so.

Nikisha King: 9:28

What that looks like is say that I was creating a planner investment guy. I have a wedding stationery business, so I work exclusively with event planners and I create this investment guide for them and say that I'm creating this guide but I don't know what to write, or I don't know what to say or what to do. And instead of me looking at it from a place of what is it that I'm telling my ideal client how can I help them in their business? I was looking at it as what can I do to win anyone over? And in doing that, I wasn't speaking to one person. I was speaking to so many people and I didn't know what to do, how to do it. I was being indecisive, I was questioning everything, but underneath it all, I didn't trust myself to do the job. I didn't trust myself to know I was capable of serving these planners in their business and helping them grow, because I questioned if I can make my business grow and in that moment, those indecisions, the lack of trust for who I am and what I can do, was dominating my thinking. It was suppressing my growth. It was allowing me to speak to people who didn't believe in their growth as well and didn't trust themselves as well, and it was frustrating, really, really frustrating.

Nikisha King: 10:56

So in 2021, and starting that transition as I kept moving forward, 2022 happened. It was a moment in 2021, I worked with a coach for nine months and in working with her, she helped me to get clear and to see how I can trust myself. I'm really good at systems, so we worked on systems, but in that moment in time, when I would come up with how and questions, she would help me by coaching me through the mindset and the work. And remember, I wanted this, I wanted to be coached. This was what I wanted, because I needed a change. I wanted to stop just not making it living paycheck to paycheck, as you would say, or job to job as a CEO, and I wanted to do the work. So I did the work, even when it was uncomfortable. And in 2022, there was a big shift. The first quarter, I made over $60,000 in one quarter, practically one month. It was interesting and it was so good, and I did it because I started to trust that I was capable for the job, that I can do any and everything, and I just kept going and kept going and kept doing it and it was so good. It was so, so good, and I'm sharing this with you because I want you to know there has to be a point in your journey where you do something different.

Nikisha King: 12:24

Hiring a coach was very different for me. Before that, I was in groups but I didn't have one-to-one coaching. One-to-one coaching was different and it was worth every penny and in that moment she helped me transform my business. And even when I was making that much money, I was still questioning can I do this again? Right, that trust question comes up. Can I do this again? Can I make this amount of money again? And the answer is yes. I had to start believing that. I had to know that there were things that I did to get me to that point, and those things are what I had to put into my brand and consistently show up doing so. Overall, I was able to keep those processes in place, convert clients or leads into clients, and something happened where I was converting at a higher rate so those jobs might have been like 5K 6K where now I'm converting a 10, 15, 20,000 dollar gig, and it's because of the trust value that I have invested in myself.

Nikisha King: 13:35

Being myself as a CEO is one of the best things because I show up differently. I show up differently to the point where people who don't know me know that I'm so capable and confident in what I do. There's this thing that happened from 2021 to now and there's a different energy that I create. I am very valuable to my planners, to my coaching clients, because there's something I had to go through to become the person I am today. Trusting myself meant I had to question can I do this? And once I said yes, then I had to come up with the thoughts that helped me achieve those actionable steps that encouraged my growth. So, for example, I work with planners exclusively.

Nikisha King: 14:28

What was the decision I had to make? Remember, I can do B2C. Get clients, potential leads, who are couples, who are birthday individuals, who are having events, inquire with me with no planner and go. I will work with them. I had to decide if I no longer wanted to do that and in any inquiries, I get the person, the couple, anyone had to have a planner. And then the question is why did I want a planner? Why did I want that exclusive relationship? Because I wanted to serve on a different level. I wanted to be part of another brand in helping them by taking the load off of their plate, the time that they would invest. I would take it over, be paid really well for it and do it on a level, a high level, not that half way.

Nikisha King: 15:22

No, I wanted to know what I was capable of and I would figure out processes and I would have a team that would run the system so flawlessly that we could have 20 clients and still do a magnificent job. And then I would question can I trust myself to do that? And I would take the challenge and go, yes, I can. And I didn't create it. And let me tell you creating it, omg, it is so good. It feels like I can't explain it, but the feeling is it's a rush. It's a rush for me when I'm challenged, because I trust myself so much. I love being challenged. And once I say yes to the challenge, I'm all in. There's no, maybe, maybe not. I'm all in. And I'm going to tell you something Behind this trust, there's a vision.

Nikisha King: 16:19

There's a clear vision for my brand. I see the building we occupy. I see the grounds we're on. I see the people who work in my brand. I see the teammates I have. I see the managers, the people who help me build this brand and run it flawlessly. I see it so clearly that today I trust every decision I make because I know where I'm going.

Nikisha King: 16:44

And if I didn't have that clear vision, my trust would it be very weak. There wouldn't be any foundation because I wouldn't know where I'm going. So I would pretty much question every decision because there was no place, there was no endpoint and it's really not an endpoint, but there was no point that I'm going to. Trusting myself meant trusting the vision I created, trusting what I see, thank you. And I've spoken this vision in many rooms to many people and when I did, I felt hot and like, oh my God, I'm telling these people what I'm seeing, what happens if I don't make it? And then I released that thought because in reality, I don't care what anyone thinks about me not making it. I only care about what I'm capable of doing and I know I'm gonna make it and the reason I know I'm gonna make it is because I trust me. I can show up, I can do the action. But it all stems from what I'm thinking. I believe in me 100% and I'm really good at so many great things, things that people have no clue about, and they don't have a clue because I don't make those opportunities available to everyone. But hear me out, trusting yourself as a CEO, as a parent, as a partner, is important. It is the thing that's going to help you create the vision and accomplish the vision you choose as your success story.

Nikisha King: 18:19

Sitting down on your hands, thinking you have no control about your journey and not trusting yourself as what's holding you back and, to be honest, you are the only human being standing in your way, and it all starts with trust. Are you willing, are you able and are you ready to trust yourself? I truly, truly believe you can and I truly believe that if you truly want something, you can do it. So let me give you some actions. Let me help you understand what trusting yourself means. One right now, you're thinking about something you want to do. How do I know this? Because we all do this.

Nikisha King: 19:08

There is something in your life you want to do right now, but you're not sure. You're not sure if you should do A or B. You're an indecisive moment. I promise you, no matter if you choose A or B, you still would be amazing and you still will come out on top, because it's not about what you choose is about how you show up in the choice that you're making. I want you to choose one thing right now. Say yes to it, say I can do this and I am going to accomplish this. And now I don't want you to think about the other option. I just want you to stay focused on the option you chose. How do you want to think about that option? Your thoughts could be I know I got this, it's already done. I'm excited for what this is about to bring to me, and I want you to feel that energy of excitement, and I want you to write down what are the actions you need to take to accomplish that decision you just made. And those actions you're taking comes from the excitement you feel, because you know what's about to shift in your life.

Nikisha King: 20:18

Stop playing it Koi, stop playing it down, stop standing in your way. You just need to make a decision, you need to trust the decision and you need to go with it and I know you can do this and I got you back. If you need me to, I will lend you my belief. I believe in you. I believe in your vision of making $100,000. I believe in your vision of getting the opportunity that you want to get in corporate or in your business Some partnership. I believe that you're an amazing partner and that thing that you do a lot that irritates your partner you can actually get better at. I believe in you. I believe you're an amazing parent and if you wanted to stop yelling every morning when it's go time, all you have to do is make the decision to stop yelling and hug more and kiss more. You can make that decision by believing in yourself and trusting your capable of doing it.

Nikisha King: 21:23

I truly, truly hoped you were able to get something out of this message, this podcast, because I truly believe in you, and I'll have some guests on for the Trust series that speak about how they trusted themselves and how their journey unfolded when they made decisions because they knew they were capable of doing it, and some of them might still be in decision mode, so we'll see what happens, but thank you for joining me on this podcast episode. Thank you for always showing up. Thank you for listening. I love and appreciate you and I hope to just be in your world and just help you by transforming your day with one simple small aha moment. This podcast is not about the but big aha's or the big moments. It's about the. Huh I didn't think about it that way. Or huh, I didn't see it that way. That's what we're here for Small aha moments that will transform your lives in big ways. Have an amazing day and I'll see you next Tuesday.

Nikisha King: 22:32

Hey, before you go, I got a golden opportunity for you. Yes, you. It's a chance that's too good to pass up a chance to work with me one-on-one, practically for free. Imagine waving a magic wand and saying goodbye to feeling completely overwhelmed, anxious and all those feelings that keep you stuck from selling your services. You know that feeling where you can't make decisions. You're on the hamster wheel. I know I was there, but what if I told you I can help you get rid of that feeling forever? Not only five minutes, ten minutes, but forever. Yes, to the point where working on your newsletter website creating content, feels like a breeze.

Nikisha King: 23:12

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