Today we’re going to talk about your fears and figuring out what’s holding you back from creating your CEO Mindset.
Growing your Avon business is pretty simple.
There are only 4 main steps:
Prospecting for new customers & recruits.
Getting a brochure (either paper or digital) to every customer every campaign.
Following-up with every customer you gave a brochure to every campaign before you place your order.
Take the order, submit it to Avon and deliver to your customer, or send them to your Avon Online Store to place their order
And then Rinse and Repeat.
It’s really that simple. You just do these 4 steps over and over again, and you will have a strong Avon business.
We have our Daily 8 System to help you work on the activities that will help you grow your business.
The Daily 8 system is a proven formula
When followed consistently, the Daily 8 Plan will help you maintain the consistency required to build a thriving team and an exponentially expanding residual income.
Instead of working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, your goal is to capture 8 POINTS a day, 5 days a week for a total of 40 POINTS per week.
Follow this plan consistently for 90-days and teach your team to do the same. At the end of 90 days, REPEAT and then REPEAT again. This is your Daily Method of operation.
The real secret to your Avon Business success is that there is NO SECRET!
It simply takes a simple plan and the dedication and commitment to WORK THE PLAN consistently! That’s it!
Everyone is welcome! Whether you’re on our Avon team or not, we welcome you & invite you to join in. 🙂
Today We’ll Talk About Getting Real About What’s Holding You Back From Your CEO Mindset
As we talked about in the last post, CEOs are visionaries.
Odds are, you created your business because you had a big, audacious goal or dream.
You had a vision.
Maybe you wanted to stay home with your kids. Maybe you wanted to be able to quit your job and work on your own terms. Or it could be a myriad of other visions.
The problem is that sometimes as you begin to bring that vision into reality, you realize it’s not as easy as you might have imagined.
Your own fears and limiting beliefs can absolutely get in the way of bringing your own vision to life.
The key is to find solutions to these problems you encounter instead of letting your emotions and self-doubt get in the way.
Reach out to a business friend or group and ask questions. Google how to do it or watch a YouTube video. Or ask for a referral to an expert who can help you.
If you don’t get out of your own way and let the small problems get you down, you can end up hurting your business.
Keep in mind that although there are basics that apply to every successful Avon Business, every Avon Representative runs their business a little differently.
That’s the benefit of our Avon business. We get to run our business the way we choose, and that works for us.
With that being said, as a CEO, you can’t just do things – like follow the latest marketing strategy – just because everybody else is doing them.
It’s easy to fall into this trap if one of your fears is “going against the grain.”
Following someone else’s strategy might work short-term, but odds are it won’t feel great to execute if it’s not actually aligned with what you know intuitively is best for your business.
For example, You think every other Avon Representative is on TikTok, so you start pouring enormous amounts of time and energy into learning the platform when you already have a good thing going with your Facebook presence that felt easy and effortless.
If you continue to pour all that time and energy into TikTok, it likely won’t yield the same results as someone who naturally feels aligned and drawn to the platform.
So, how do you avoid something like the above happening to you?
How can you ensure that you’re able to bring your vision to life?
I give you permission to go back to basics when it comes to formulating strategies!
A favorite mentor of mine always asks her clients, “What if it was easy?”
The strategy doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated.
Start off with what you know, become an expert at it, then venture off to a new platform if you feel inclined.
Speaking in more general terms, to avoid copying others and to believe in crafting your own business plans and strategies, you have to uncover the SPECIFIC fears that are holding you back.
Common Fears Business Owners Face That Can Impact their CEO Mindset
I’ll dig into the entire process in just a minute but for now, here are some common fears CEOs face.
Do you recognize yourself in any of them?
Fear of saying NO (you don’t want to miss the next big opportunity)
The fear of making decisions (so you procrastinate or put them off)
Fear of offending others (some business owners are afraid to write polarizing content or speak to one specific person because of this fear)
Afraid of managing a team (it seems too complicated or expensive)
Financial fears (fear you won’t make enough money or that you’ll lose it all if you do increase your income)
Fear of success (you don’t know if you’re capable of handling more clients and more responsibility)
The list of fears goes on, but can you relate to any of these?
If so, the good news is there’s an actual process you can follow to uncover your fears and clear them away so you can confidently step into the role of CEO and build your company, your way.
Where Do You Start to Know What’s Affecting Your CEO Mindset?
Follow these steps:
Start by actually defining your fears. Pull out a journal and answer this question: What am I afraid of when it comes to growing or running my business as the leader?
Write freestyle – or free flow – for 10-20 minutes and see what comes out.
Do any of these ideas surprise you? Dig deeper in another journal entry.
Think back to your childhood. Do you think any of these fears stemmed from interactions with adults or your parents? Can you think of specific experiences that might have formed these fears?
This isn’t about placing blame; it’s simply acknowledging that some fears are deep seeded and those usually take longer to change.
Journal about how you’ll feel when you see your business starting to take shape.
Do you have the desire to eliminate these fears and change to a growth mindset?
What do you hope to accomplish? These can be specific business milestones or a more general description of the company you want to create.
This is a great starting point.
I always like to end with some positive thoughts in my journal so that’s what your brain is left with at the end of the exercise.
Focusing solely on negative, fixed mindset thoughts (like your fears) can weigh on you, which can be detrimental if you’re an emotional person.
Even if you don’t care for writing, journaling can help you organize your thoughts – about your fears and about the future of your business – and you might recognize some patterns and/or gain some clarity about what you see in your future.
I know not everyone is into journaling but if done on a regular basis, you might just discover the benefits of this new calming habit.
Define and Refine the Fears Stunting Your Growth (So You Can Start Crushing Your Goals!)
The next step in the process of identifying your fears is to go back and read what you’ve written in your journal.
It’s time to get clearer on what you’re actually afraid of so you can create a “shortlist” of your fears to begin to work through.
Right now, your list of fears might be long and seem overwhelming and you and I both know that you’ll stall out before you even begin tackling your fears if the list is too long.
Now’s the time to get really specific.
Ask yourself:
Do you notice any patterns with your fears? Do any fears show up more than once?
Are your fears all related to a similar, overarching fear? (For example, “going Live on Facebook” and “creating YouTube videos” both tie into going Live on video)
As You Hone in on These Fears, Turn Them into List Form.
Then, go through each fear on the list and ask: Is this a larger, multifaceted fear or is this a fear that can be broken into smaller parts, or into something more specific (aka easier to tackle)?
Classifying your fears in this way will help you get a handle of their true size and depth and help you recognize what you can actually start working on now.
Here are examples of bigger/vague fears:
Fear of things unknown – “I’ve never led anyone before!”
Not sure what step to take next – “I just figured X thing out, and now I have to do Y?”
Fear of making mistakes or screwing up
Fear of failure – You always hear the stats about how many founders fail
Responsibility – I not only have to support my own family but also my clients and potential/future team members
Fear of looking or feeling inadequate – “I’m an imposter and soon everyone will find out”
If any of those sound familiar, our goal is to get clearer and turn them into something more precise so you can actually start to overcome them.
Here are some examples of specific fears:
Speaking on a webinar or Facebook Live
Giving feedback to a team member who isn’t performing at the level you expect
Delegating social media to a pro
Recording videos for social media
Let’s go back to your list of fears. Go through and using the criteria above, categorize each fear into “vague” or “specific.”
For each “vague” fear, try to further refine it into something specific.
To do this, think back to some instances where you noticed fear was present.
Can you pinpoint a definite source of that bigger fear?
For example, Fear of “screwing up” might have shown up when you were about to post a promotional post on Instagram.
Maybe you are worried people would see you as weird or sleazy. “Fear of looking sleazy on social media” is a more specific fear.
Or maybe you recall a time when you promoted a product and received some unflattering reviews.
Or maybe it was something smaller, like when you met with a new customer for the first time and called her by the wrong name.
Identifying those incidents as human mistakes will go a long way to eradicating that fear of screwing up.
Learn the Lessons from these Incidents
Understand that these mistakes do not take away from your abilities to run your Avon Business as a CEO.
Take the embarrassment out of the equation and move on with your plans.
This is just one example out of many.
Your experience will be different from your friend’s so there’s no room for comparison here.
No matter what your fears are, there are lessons to be learned and you have the ability to turn that fixed mindset around to a growth mindset.
Anyone can turn their employee mindset into a CEO mindset.
You might be able to quickly identify a more specific fear inside your vague fears and if so, that’s great!
The key is to zero in on whatever specific thing provokes the MOST fear because that’s the one most blocking your growth.
If you’re unable to further refine your fears right now, it’s okay.
I encourage you to still move through this process.
Keep moving through your list until you’ve refined each fear into something as specific as possible.
Take your time going through the process because the deeper you dig to get specific about those fears, the more progress you’ll make in the long run.
Tackle the Right Fear First for the Biggest Payoff
Now that you have a list of specific fears and can see them laid out on paper (which is half the battle!), it’s time to crack them open and see if they’re really as terrible as you think.
Go through your list and for each fear, ask the following question:
What timeframe and what ‘level’ of impact will my fear have on my business and my life?
For example, will this particular fear have a short-term impact or long-term impact?
Is it a low-impact fear or a bigger fear?
The short-term impact might include anything that will affect your business from one month to one year. The long-term might anything longer than one year.
Let’s look at an example:
“The fear of posting promotional content on social media” will have a short-term impact and immediate consequences if you’re trying to reach a sales level or earn an incentive.
It can also have a bigger impact going forward because you’re not promoting your products and you’re not nurturing your relationships with your social media followers.
While you don’t need to rely on social media to reach your sales goals, you’ll need to come up with a different plan for making money and increasing your reach.
Giving up on social media promotions can also be construed as “giving in” to your fear, which is really just teaching you to run away from what frightens you.
Instead of thinking of social media as a fear (in this particular example), why not consider it a way to stretch out of your comfort zone?
Taking those first steps can be difficult but stretching often leads to bigger results.
Or maybe the lesson here is to outsource your social media to a social media manager who can manage your online presence and plan your posts without you feeling that fear of not knowing what you’re doing. Your teenagers are great for this!
Your CEO brain can use that extra time – and feelings of confidence – to plot out new ways to find more customers and build your business instead of worrying about social media.
Remember, there are no right or wrong answers when analyzing your fears and how they’ll impact you – acknowledge your fears and how they make you feel because those feelings are true for you!
Classify Your Fears With a Numeric Value
Another way to break your fears down is to try classifying them with a numeric value (like 1-4).
To do this, you’ll want to classify your fears by timeliness. The more timely a fear is, the higher it is to a 1.
For example, this promotional posting on social media fear might be a 1 on your scale.
This means you’ll need to focus on tackling the fear now – not later – because it will have an immediate impact on your business and sales.
However, if one of your fears is “managing a team of 3 or 4 people” but you’re just getting started in your business right now.
It’s not that this fear isn’t important, but it’s just not the most pressing thing or the fear that’s going to hold you back the most right now. First, you might want to focus on sales.
When it feels like you’re afraid of lots of things (which is what can happen when you start to write these fears on paper), rating your fears this like can really help you prioritize what fears will have the biggest and most timely impact on your business or your life.
These are the fears you want to start working through first.
You can also follow these steps to classify your fears in your personal relationships.
Do you have a fear of talking about money with your spouse? Why?
Break down that fear into specifics so you know how the conversation will proceed with your spouse.
Now that you’ve classified your fears in this way, look back at your list.
What is your most pressing fear? This will be one of the fears you marked as a 1 using the second method, or a fear you feel will have a big impact in the short-term using the first method.
Pick one fear to work through using the rest of this process that I’m about to share with you.
Break Down Your Fears with Tiny-But-Bold Action
Once you’ve done the hard work of naming and refining your fears into something more specific and manageable, it’s time to start making actual moves toward “getting over” the fear.
But before you just dive in and start trying to do the things you’re afraid of, pause.
Not all actions are created equal.
One way to figure out the best action to take to get over your fear is to dig deeper into their source.
According to David Whetten and Kim Cameron in their book, “Developing Management Skills,” there are a few ways to discover the “source” of any fear.
Most “CEO fears” will fall into one (or both!) of these categories:
Lack of knowledge OR
Lack of personal motivation
Which category do your fears fall into? Ask the following questions:
Is this fear an ‘ability’ issue? Do you simply not have the knowledge or skills you need to do what you need or want to do?
If the answer is yes, there are three more questions the authors suggest asking:
Do you need additional resources to support you in building your ability in this are?
Is it additional training that you need?
Do you actually NEED to learn this skill or thing, or is this something you can perhaps hire out to someone else?
For example, if your big fear is around not knowing how to tackle your taxes or fear that you’ll wind up in a bind with the IRS, you might actually NOT need training around this.
What you might need is to find an awesome accountant who understands your business.
The next question is about personal motivation.
Do you feel motivated to do the thing you fear?
If not, ask yourself these questions:
Do you truly understand why taking this action or doing this thing matters? If not, this of course could lead to low motivation over time.
Are you seeking a reward or benefit from this action that you haven’t received?
For example, You’ve posted promotional posts on social media before and either received crickets in return or a negative (or even just neutral) comment.
This can lead to low motivation to try it again because you don’t think there could actually be a positive payoff (like a sale or at least a positive comment).
Answering these questions should help you discover whether the fear comes from lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, or both.
It should also help you start to UNDERSTAND your fears so you can look at them in a more RATIONAL and LOGICAL way.
Brainstorm the Right Action to Take
Now you can ask yourself the following questions to start to brainstorm the right action to take:
What action can I take right now to get over this fear? Or is this fear out of my control at the moment? (The “at the moment” is key!)
If you identify that there IS an action you can take right now, awesome! That’s where you’ll start.
If there’s truly no action you can take, this doesn’t mean you’ll never address this fear. You have it in writing–and since this is a process you should repeat, you will revisit this fear.
Luckily, action isn’t the only way to address fears, although it is what we’re focusing on here.
Other ways to address the fears that don’t allow you to take immediate action on include:
Journaling around the fear. What exactly is the fear? When is the first time you remember experiencing this fear? Does it remind you of a particular situation from your past?
Addressing it energetically. Some fears are deep-seated and not only hard to take action on, but also hard to define. Using a tool like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to figure out what your true fears are and to move through them energetically can be helpful. Free instructional videos are available on YouTube.
Blocking time out in your calendar each quarter to revisit your fears. While it would be nice if you could set time aside to figure out your fears every time you experience them, that’s not always feasible. Setting a specific time to revisit your list of fears and follow the rest of this process would be very valuable for both your business and your personal fears.
For the sake of example, I’m going to take you through a fear you can take action on right now.
Keep going through your list until you find a fear that does have some action (no matter how small) you can take.
If we go back to the fear of posting promotional content on social media, one small action you could take would be to add a call to action to a post you’ve already put up just to get a “feel” for it.
You could also use a gentle CTA like “Message me for more information” vs. “Click to buy now.”
You could also just plan out your next promotional post, including the topic and CTA.
Again, there are no right or wrong answers.
Your answer to the question above (“What action can I take right now to get over this fear?”) should help you choose the right action.
If you feel like you need to learn more about this social platform, seek out blog posts that convey best practices and find one nugget that you can take action on.
Even if you take on one small action every day, those will add up to big changes over time.
Eventually, you will overcome your fear or find another way to work around it.
If you’re struggling to come up with an action, the good news is you don’t have to “eat the frog’ when it comes to your biggest or most pressing fear.
That phrase is a time management and procrastination tool that simply means to tackle your biggest or most uncomfortable task first.
It may not feel good at the time, but the sense of accomplishment will carry you throughout the day.
And you’ll likely realize that whatever this task was, it wasn’t as difficult or troubling as you made it out to be.
As it turns out, we don’t need to post a promotional post and get 30 sales from it in order to successfully face our fear of posting promotional content on social media.
Instead, if we focus on–and achieve–one small win, we will feel like we’re making progress toward overcoming our fears.
What’s a small win? For this example, it might be:
Writing the promotional post
Posting the promotional post
Responding to any negative comments on the post with a neutral response (Try to focus on what you CAN control vs. what you can’t!)
If your most pressing fear is speaking on live webinars, you can start by creating a pre-recorded webinar.
Simply creating the webinar is the first step.
Or, if a whole webinar seems overwhelming, you can start by writing an outline for the webinar.
These small wins can boost confidence and as your confidence expands, you’ll feel more motivated to keep taking action toward getting over your fears.
Don’t Forget to REWARD Yourself as You Build Your CEO Mindset.
This is another proven psychological principle that has been shown to help people overcome fears.
A reward will imprint in your mind that tackling your fears is a GOOD and POSITIVE thing for you to do.
And while you might not see immediate results in your business from posting on social media (for example), over time this “small action” will help you get over your fears and therefore make progress on the goals you have for your business–and get you that much closer to that VISION you hold.
Next week we’ll talk about surrounding yourself with other supportive CEO Superstars.
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