Learning to Believe in Myself in Business

I had the privilege of reading Believe It, while I was starting up Me2We Moms. Believe It is a must read for entrepreneurs and for women who are on a mission to help other women. I had not appreciated this important focus until I asked my sister in law if she had read it. She said: ‘I’m not into make up or QVC’. Well, nor was I! But I could relate to so much of her journey.

The introduction to the book was among the most heartfelt that I had ever listened to. When she asked, ‘has anyone ever not believed in you’, it hit a chord. She had been told she would not succeed because of her body. But it only served to remind her that she had to continue. People believed only certain body types could be seen and associated with the beauty industry. Her mission was to ensure everyone was seen, even if this meant she did not sell her product. But that was her secret sauce and she sold her company for over 1 billion dollars.

Along the way she had so many no’s. And in a recent podcast with Jamie, another entrepreneur shared his belief that being able to persist beyond the no’s was key to an entrepreneur’s success. As a government funded academic, I have a lot of experience hearing no. Only 10% of grants are funded and some medical journals have an acceptance rate of only 4% for publications. After my first no outside of academia, my business coach recommended collecting 100 no’s. Brutal!! In particular, Jamie talked about accepting the no’s at the time but not being resentful, instead working to turn them into yeses in the long run. The first no I received made me resentful of that particular lady, and made me think I would not provide a little library for her community. But hearing Jamie, I realized I had to let go of this and be generous so that someone else could connect with me in that community. And I also had to learn to stop asking naysayers since I would only prove that I was not worth it. I had asked a particularly sharp character for feedback and so the feedback I got was sharp. I should have known that.

In addition, Jamie worked 100 hour weeks for about 10 years. I probably worked 70 hour weeks for 10 years, but with kids on top of that. I burned out. I want my new Me2We Moms business to succeed, but I don’t want to work 24/7 again. I am having to define success as a business I can run in the time I have when the kids are at school. If that means I have less success, if success is correlated with time invested, then so be it. After leaving my job, I promised myself to work smarter not harder.

Another common thread for me was her pursuit of a second dream. Jamie described giving up on her dream job, a television presenter, to start It Cosmetics. She had no training in developing and selling make up, although clearly being a TV presenter helped when she started selling on TV. But she felt like she could no longer pursue her TV presenter dream because her rosacea kept showing up on screen through her makeup. She describes this as a set back that was her set up.

I have not often heard of other women having their dream job and giving it up to do something even more impactful. But this is also my story, although I am still in chapter 1 or 2, Jamie’s book includes the whole 18 chapters as she becomes one of the richest and most successful female CEOs. I had my dream job, as a public health professor. I worked hard, I climbed my way up the promotion ladder, I impacted my field through my projects and publications, I served on county and state committees related to aging and liveability, and I created programs for older adults that in some of their words, saved their life. I was passionate about this path, but it wasn’t sustainable. We operated from scarcity. When you are surrounded by people feeling equally stressed and stretched, collaborations are half hearted.

I funded myself and a group of about 40 staff and students. In addition to the work I paid myself to do, we were also expected to serve in many ways that resulted in burnout. Not just from the hours invested, but because the institution did not value our time. Further, there were so many limitations on what we could do and how we could do it. I felt like I could have a bigger impact outside of this setting. I eventually realized I did not belong there. Or rather when a male colleague told me I did not belong, I realized my values did not align with the institute and it was exhausting trying to survive. Thrive was not even on anyone’s mind.

I felt like a failure when I decided to leave. I thought about the obituary (a tool that can help you check your life choices) that path would have provided; a world renowned professor of public health. That would have been acceptable to me. But it would have been a shorter life, and one where my family felt second best. It has been 3 years, and I feel with Me2We Moms I can at last turn my set back into a set up, and share everything I have learned along the way from over 150 books and several coaches. I am finding my voice and helping to prevent burn out in other moms.

When Jamie talked about wanting to build an empire and not needing to marry a man to succeed, I heard my younger self. Time and motherhood I believe has dimmed the light for me that she encourages us to shine. When I became a mother, I became a parent like my own had been to me. Authoritative and controlling. It was the start of my path to not liking myself. Then as I built my empire in academia, I constantly felt like I was not enough, and could not do the best job I wanted with my staff and students. So while the products and funding succeeded, my relationships made me feel like a bad person. I felt shame. I have come to realize that I have self confidence in what I do, but lack belief in who I am at my core. I think it is partly because I have kept this person small and not really known her at all. Getting to know her, with the help of books like Believe It, has been my journey.

While Jamie’s whole mission is to bring diversity to the beauty industry, she shares her own struggles with beauty standards. She asked Meg Whitman whether she is weighed down by body image concerns. The answer was simply ‘no’. I don’t have time to be. This helped Jamie see how much time she was giving to behaviors that she did not want to give time to. Likewise, when I watched a documentary called ‘Embrace’ about a woman on a journey to body acceptance, it asked how much time did I spend thinking about dieting and food? Did I want to spend that much time on this? Or did I want to put that time to better use? Yes! But first how do you give up that time sink that is such an automatic habit? How could I give up a lifetime of planning meals, counting calories, worrying about failing, and berating myself over my failures? My coach knew I tended to make healthy choices, the problem was how much healthy food I was eating to avoid eating something unhealthy, or to avoid over-eating later. But I would fail everyday with that strategy, so I just kept eating more than I needed. The answer was to only eat when I was hungry, and to only eat when I really, really wanted to eat the thing I was choosing. So I stopped eating breakfast to make sure I had a healthy start to the day, and just ate when I was hungry. Sometimes it was first thing, sometimes not till midday. Then I only ate the most delicious food I could find. Usually some fresh fruit. I found my love of food again and I gave up all the thoughts around it. The only thought I needed was: do I really, really want to eat this? SO MUCH TIME SAVED. And so empowering. And you know what, I started to lose weight. And you know what, I stopped caring about my weight. I just wanted to have a peaceful relationship with food. It was such a relief and such a shedding of a burden. It might not work for everyone but it worked for me.