143. The Mindset Blocks That Might Be Holding You Back from Showing Up Online ft. Michelle Ellis

Subscribe Now to Discover Why Other Smart Health Coaches Like You Tune into the Healthy Hustle Podcast.

Making videos and showing up online can feel overwhelming and scary. Even after 12 years of being in business, I still have my own fears and imposter syndrome still shows up. But if you go back to my video archives, you’ll also see that I did it scared anyways. I did it before I was ready. I did it before I had a perfect plan. 

And you know what? If I hadn’t done it back then, I would have never grown my business to what it is today. So if you feel like you’re alone in this world of creating your business, know that you’re not. 

In this episode, Michelle Ellis and I want to go behind the scenes on what it takes to actually show up online in today’s world. You bet we’re going to be talking about reels, videos, TikTok and all the new social media trends that are key to building your business. We’re also talking about the overwhelm that comes with content creation and what helped Michelle and I get over our fears, plus some of the strategies that we both use today to show up for our audience.

Connect with Michelle:

Michelle’s website: https://michelleellisco.showit.site/#/
Michelle’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theorganiccopywriter/ 


Rachel: Hey guys, we are back on an episode of Healthy Hustle. What we wanted to talk about today was a behind the scenes of what it takes to actually show up in today’s world. When we do reels and do videos to build your business. I’ve been talking to a lot of brand new coaches, even a coach that has been in this business for years, talking about this lack of confidence, imposter syndrome, and so much wasted time that they could have spent where it made a difference. Instead they were overthinking and letting that perfectionism stop them from actually getting going. 

So what I wanted to talk about is the behind the scenes of what actually goes on with me when I do videos, how it has been coming out of burnout, and getting back in the saddle and doing those videos. Because so often what you just see is the completed video. It’s done. So you think that maybe it was super easy for someone else. 

That’s the whole lie that I want to call bullshit on is that we think it’s so easy for everyone else. I always thought that everyone else had it all figured out. But what I learned when I started talking to other entrepreneurs and other people, especially in the wellness space who are building a personal brand, is that it can feel scary. It can feel overwhelming. 

How To Get Over The Mindset Hacks So You Can Just Do It

So in today’s episode, I want to talk about really what that overwhelm was like and what helped me get over it, plus some of the strategies that I use today to show up. I also want to hear from Michelle and her experience. So Michelle, I know that you started doing Reels. Tell me, was there fear about doing that? What was the mindset hacks that you use to just say, I’m gonna go and do it? 

Michelle: Yeah, I think the first thing was I had this overwhelming feeling of not wanting to do the tech side of it. I had anticipated it to be harder than it actually was. It was much easier for me to stay in my comfort zone of grab a picture and post it on social media with writing, because that’s what I’m good at. So I’m just gonna keep doing that. 

Then I was like, Well, I actually do have a fun personality. I do like to have fun, and it would be cool to do Reels. So one day I decided to just try it and see. And it was a lot easier than I thought it was! Then it became fun. It’s isn’t as bad as I thought it was. It was okay. I still have a lot to learn on Tik Tok and all that stuff. My daughter is trying to teach me all these crazy things that you can do on Tik Tok, and I’m not there yet. Maybe next week. But today it was just getting over a little bit of that fear, both tech-wise and also just trying to just show up and be confident knowing that it’s okay if it’s not perfect. But just keep doing it.

Rachel: What helps you with your confidence? I think that’s the big thing that we think about. We can get to that place where we push through, but I feel like some of the stuff that you talked about – like having those thoughts of, oh, this is going to be really hard. This may be really difficult. That’s the overthinking that uses our energy and takes us away from doing somthing. So what helped? Was it just simply saying, I’m going to do this?

Getting Used To What The Future Of Social Media Involves

Michelle: So I think the first time took me a couple of tries. Then it was okay. I still did it simply because you can do Reels and they can be extravagant with editing and all that. I know everyone uses Inshot and just the other day was should I pay for this Inshot? Should I start trying it? Because I know that everyone’s making these rules in there. But I have to keep it simple. If I don’t keep it simple, I get overwhelmed, and I get a lot of anxiety and then it just bleeds me dry. So I don’t have any things that use the energy I need to actually show up.

So I kept it simple to start. Then so it was like okay, add some text, add a voiceover. I can do this. I got this. Yesterday, I did some dancing ones that I have not posted. But I just did them for me to get used to this new social media. This is the future of social media. It’s video and I think it’s become such a key component now that we have something like Tik Tok, which is all video. You don’t post pictures or captions at all. And it’s growing rapidly. 

So I think if we look at that perspective we have to go with social media bit here and step up our game a bit to be seen, otherwise, our message won’t get heard. People aren’t going to see us, they’re not going to connect with us. So I just looked at it like, I have to get over my stuff and just show up and do it as often as I want Not because I have to but because I want to. Because it’s funny, or it’s exciting or I’m trying to drive traffic to something. 

It’s also a really awesome organic tool and I think that it’s really important. If nobody wants to do it, if they’re not ready yet, or they’re just not doing it to invest in ads where you’re paying to be seen then you have to play to be seen and actually show up on video. It’s really important. So I think the mindset behind it is knowing the reality of that, and then just being willing and open to just try it, and test it and keep practicing. 

Honestly, there was a couple of times I messed up so bad, I thought about doing a blooper. This is what it’s really like behind you when you don’t get your voice over right. When someone interrupts, all those things. So I think just trying to show up and push through and know that everybody feels that way. I know everyone’s got to feel that way when they’re doing it.

Rachel: Well, I know that we talk about what stops us from having confidence. I think if I can go and get really personal, it was a lot of those self-worth issues that I had come up with –even still today when I’m doing this business. When I felt really burnt out a year ago, I didn’t have any energy to create content. One of the things that I really felt was that social media is exhausting. 

Thank goodness I had so much video content already that I could repurpose that, take little snippets of videos and put that onto Instagram and put that on two different social media platforms. But what I found during that time was to actually just take a little step back, I had to repurpose, but I had to not go live and make sure that I was conserving energy. 

When I think of a coach who’s in that overwhelmed state, I would say –and I know it goes against everything that I talked about to be visible – take a step back, and maybe not do the Lives so much. Try to focus on just short Reels. Try to focus on five-minute videos to be able to put on YouTube and get prepped and prepared. 

One of the things that really took away the anxiety when I felt that I wasn’t capable of doing Lives in the same way that I was doing them before was that I did them on a PowerPoint. I felt that having that PowerPoint, and having it a little more scripted, compared to just going off the cuff gave me that confidence to be able to start going again. I think that’s the biggest thing. 

So much of what I experienced from that burnout and taking a step back, I realized how much it screwed with my head. Because I wouldn’t even say to you, I’m so nervous about going Live. I’m so nervous about doing this. And yet, I have been consistently showing up for 12 years in this business and in this space. So I had shown up consistently for 11 years without fail on any deck. 

Yet my mind started playing tricks on me, saying, you don’t know how to do this. You’re not good at this. When I think about the mindset hacks to get out of that space. It was talking to other people –that was number one. Two was going into therapy. I started seeing a trauma therapist to really work on some of that stuff that was making my mind go around like a hamster in a cage I just felt like no matter what I was doing, I couldn’t get out of that lack of self-confidence. It was getting worse.

It was really looking at why this was so prevalent in my life. When I think of coaches who are not making money, I think maybe, is it their funnel? No. Maybe your niche is not clear. Maybe your messaging is not clear. That’s big blooper number one but I would say it’s really common. 

But I can think of 20 coaches right now, off the top of my head, who have all the education, all the certifications, and straight up, there’s only one thing they’re missing and that’s a lack of confidence and that’s stopping them from making money. Because that lack of confidence doesn’t just show up when we’re doing social media or video or Reels. It shows up on a discovery call. It shows up when we are pitching our offerings, it even shows up when we want to reach out to this Facebook admin. Should I post this post? Should I do this?

All these thoughts turned into just more exhaustion, more depletion, more perfectionism, more inner critic, crap, all that stuff. I felt that I was there but I came out of that. Thank God. I have that support system. But I finally had to just say, Rachel, get over yourself. Because that ego was getting in the way. I was like, well, maybe I’m not going to do it. Maybe I’m not gonna do that. Maybe I don’t look good today. My hair isn’t done. All this different stuff to stop us. But I realized none of that stuff affected me in the beginning. I was so clear on my why and who we needed to serve. 

I just think I got jacked. And I see a lot of coaches who talk about that and I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs and influencers who are talking about having those quarters and those seasons, where you just feel off. 

How To Adjust For The Coaches Who Enter The Off Season

What would you suggest when we have those times where we just don’t feel ourselves? How can we adjust for the coaches in that offseason?

Michelle: I allow myself to feel it for a short period of time. I’ll feel into it. Personally I’ll be like, Okay, we’re going camping for four days. I’m unplugged from the buzz of life. I won’t be looking at social media doing the comparison thing, I won’t be questioning myself, and I just remember the best parts of me that self-time. We don’t really give ourselves this time to be with ourselvees when we’re in regular life. So I usually take that time and I also fill it with a lot of motivational videos and Sermons and Talks and speakers. I just remind myself of positive things because  I think we live in a society and in a world that can be very negative, and it just feeds us the wrong way. We have to diet from that stuff. 

Rachel: I’ve always said to you, you’re such a positive person. But I think some of us aren’t as positive, so it takes a lot more work. Or maybe we’ve had things in our life that happened. You’ve shared before things that have happened in your life; we all have our stuff. But I think the setup that you have for coming out of it is a really great tool. I would say for anyone else I think sometimes we just get to a point where we have to fake it till we make it.

Michelle: Yeah, I can honestly say that it took a muscle for me to develop. Because for a long time I was not positive. I can honestly say there was almost an entire year of my life, probably at least nine months, where I legit couldn’t leave the house to even go to the store around the corner. I’d be like, I can’t breathe. It was so bad. But I think because I experienced it so early on in my teens, that my 20s were better off because of it took a lot. I just had a moment where it was like, I just can’t live like this anymore. I don’t know want the rest of my life to be like this and I can’t have it like this anymore.

So I just became hardcore dedicated, I did therapy, multiple therapists, I did everything. Every book. I went to college to learn psychology to fix myself. Now I had no choice. I felt like I had to figure this thing out, to show up. But I recognize it’s still a muscle that I have to continually work out. Because there are times where I have Weak days and there are times that I have stronger days. And so it’s just this constant eb and flow. 

And it’s natural it’s natural. We’re never all going to always be happy. Because there’s also just regular things in life that trigger us. There’s diets that triggers, there’s all the environmental factors that trigger us and even just a lack of vitamin D. There’s so many things. So I think controlling what we can control is really important. And then just letting it not be perfect. And going forward.

How To Avoid Getting Stuck In Perfection & Regaining Confidence

Rachel: I think that’s the key to success is not getting stuck in the perfection, because that perfection leads to procrastination and that procrastination leads to bad feelings which leads to a lack of confidence. That’s why I’ve been saying the only remedy for getting over fear is just doing. And it’s just prepping and practicing. 

I know for this video series that I’m working on, I took some days to just practice to just go through the PowerPoints to visualize myself doing it, to push through the fear. A lot of those were times that I am exercising. Times that I’m taking walks, times that I’m just sitting to visualize the doing part of it and not get stuck in that overthinking fear of, is it going to be wrong? Is it going to be bad? Am I going to sound stupid? All those things that come up when we are playing poker. 

Michelle: It’s so important to just keep going through the fear and keep doing it. And the fear gets less. It’s like exposure therapy. You have to really expose yourself to it. You have to allow yourself to feel the fear, which even benefits little bit. And then each time the fear gets less and you just develop the strength to get over the fear. 

Rachel: I always say when you’re building your business, you have to think of your clients. If we’re telling somebody to get off gluten, or balance their blood sugar, or go on a brand new protocol –it’s so scary for clients. I can think of my clients calling and being like, Okay, I’m in Vitamin Shoppe, what am I buying? Oh, my God, I’m taking a probiotic, or Oh, my God, I’m changing this habit. 

It felt really overwhelming. Or maybe somebody who’s getting over the addiction of emotional eating. We’re taking away their baby blankets. We have to think of that in our business. We have to look at this as, as you said, exercising this muscle so that we get stronger and better at doing things. And it becomes more natural. 

But I think at the end of the day, you got to take care of yourself, especially if you’re building this business with a nine to five. You can afford to spend energy on impostor syndrome. That’s where a lot of coaches get stuck. The ones that are successful are the ones that just push through.

Michelle: Yeah, absolutely. 

Rachel: All right, guys. We’re gonna make this what I call shorty podcast. I just wanted to share behind the scenes. So if you feel like you’re alone in this world of creating your business, you’re not. 

Even after 12 years of being in this business, have my own fears, my own impostor syndrome that shows up my own inner critic. But if you see from the success that I’ve had, or you go back to my YouTube videos all the way back to like 12 years ago, you’ll see that I did it scared. I did it before I was ready. I did it before I had a perfect plan. And if I didn’t do it, I wouldn’t have been asked to summit. I wouldn’t have been asked to be on people’s podcasts. I wouldn’t have been asked to teach for different schools and stuff of that nature. 

This happened because I was visible. So make sure you’re getting your big girl panties on, or your big guy boxer or getting yourself out there and remembering that confidence is only going to be built by you. We will see you later. Michelle, thanks for being here. Bye guys.

Additional Resources:

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