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Welcome to the brand builders lab podcast. I'm your host Chadwick certified business and mindset coach, author and speaker Each week, we'll be talking about simple but powerful business and mindset strategies that will help you build a lean, clean and profitable business. So you can learn to get out of your own way and pay yourself more more, forget average, it's time to level up.

Don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you don't belong. Because you will always find it, yes, don't walk through the world looking for evidence that you're not enough, because you'll always find it. Our worth and our belonging are not negotiated with other people, we carry those inside of our hearts. And so for me, I know who I am, I'm clear about that. And I'm not going to negotiate that with you. Today, we are talking all about self validation. And knowing your worth where you are right now, knowing what you're capable of, and knowing the impact that you can have.

speaking at an event recently, it just hit me again, how important it is for us to talk about this not just once, not just that one time at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday. But for me to be the voice in your ear that tells you that you are capable of so much and that people want to hear your voice. They want to hear your story. And one of the questions that I asked when I was speaking at this event recently was how many of you feel like you're you've got an interesting story or that people want to hear your story. And out of 70 odd people, three people raised their hands. And it just kind of floored me that we don't see the value in our own stories. We don't see the value in sharing the experiences that we've had the things that we've learned with others. And you don't always have to be the biggest celebrity you don't always have to have a huge personal brand. It's really about being somebody who wants to continue to share with others what you've learned along the way. And whether you're in a corporate job or whether you've got your own business. I think that just knowing that we have something of value to share and pass on through the stories and the experiences that we've had. I just really want to encourage you to think about how you're doing that and also valuing it yourself. And so I think the first thing is really that self validation. When I looked at the video on social media of Brene Brown sharing what I've just shared at the beginning of this podcast, there was so many questions around how do I understand

and how to be worthy? Or how do I learn to be worthy? Or how do I increase my self worth? And I think that you've really got to sit and look at what are the stories that you tell yourself? What are the things that you're saying to yourself where you don't feel worthy? Like whose voices are they? Where are those voices come from? And how do you become the dominant voice in your life and in your business, to be able to recognize your own worth, to be able to say, I'm really good at what I do. And I know that I can help my clients and I know that I can achieve my goals. And I know that I can have the impact that I want. And I know that I can sell the theme or whatever it is that you want to create for yourself, you've got to really take a look at and we've talked about this before. But you've got to take a look at what's happening right now. And then you've got to take a look at what do you want to be thinking, What do you want to be saying to yourself? What do you want to be feeling and experiencing? And not just letting that run your life? Because I think it's such an interesting question that we ask ourselves when we say to ourselves, how do I build myself? And I think if you're asking yourself that question, then you've got to go deeper into why you don't think that you're worthy. And usually, there's something there from the past that comes up if you feel like that. And we have to own our worthiness. And so I think that's the first thing. The second thing is that we have to not allow noes and external rejections and things that don't go our way to then deteriorate, or dent, our self worth, and our ability to feel worthy. One of the questions that I was asked was, What if I asked for something because one of the things I talked about in my talk, was asking for what you want, because people can't read your mind, and going after what you want and have the tenacity to go after what you want. And so one of the questions that I had was, what if I asked for what I want? And the answer is no. And my response was that one of the best things I've done for myself is to read and to listen to a wide variety of founders stories. And I've listened to how Airbnb maxed out all their credit cards, and then they, you know, eventually got to a place where they started to get clients in, but then the pandemic hit, and they lost like 80% of their business, or when I listened to Lisa messenger in daring and disruptive that she had to ask like 88 people before, she got somebody to say yes to supporting her magazine idea. And I think that one of the first things I want to talk about is not having the expectation that things will be easy, not having the expectation that whatever it is that we want is just going to come to us without any resistance or failure or knows. And so just knowing that it is part of the journey to success, or to the outcome that we want, is that the road is going to be hard. Because if it was easy as they say everybody would do it. And so knowing that you're going to come up against the resistance or knowing that you're going to get knows, and preparing yourself and expecting it is such an important thing. But it comes back to this topic today of self validation is that you're not looking for other people to validate you. You're looking for people who can partner with you and advocate for you to get to where you want to go. But you're not looking for validation outside of yourself. And when you're not looking for the validation outside of yourself, somebody is saying no, is not the worst thing that can happen. Somebody saying no is not the end of the world. It's just one of the things that you experience on your journey and your path to where you're going in sales. And throughout my entrepreneurial life, the saying of the more nose you get means that you're probably going to get a lot more yeses to because you're just continuously putting yourself out there. And I think the only way that you can do that is to continuously validate yourself. This is a great idea. I know this is a great idea. I know that I can do this. It's gonna be hard. It's gonna take work. I'm gonna get nose along the way but I'm gonna keep going because I believe in the idea I believe in what it is that I'm doing and I believe that I can have an impact and whether you are Can I just say whether you are 19 Or you are 59 or 99 whatever it is, you can have an impact and I think one of the other The things that happened when I was speaking last week is that a very young girl came up to me and she said, you know, there is a problem that I see where I work. And I feel like there's discrimination in a particular way. But I feel very alone, I feel very alone with it. And I don't really know how to make an impact. Yeah. And when I've spoken out before, it's been a problem.

And so when we know that there is something that we want to fight against, which is part of building your personal brand, it's talking about what do you stand against, then it's once again, not going to be an easy road. And so it's not always about finding the yeses. It's about finding advocates, it's about sharing your message and finding other people that resonate with it. It's about sharing your message and building the movement. It's about building the community. And there are different ways that you can go about doing it. And I think that when we are looking to fight against something, I think we have to become really good people, readers as well. And it's not about conforming, it's about really reading the room and communicating in different ways learn to communicate in different ways, in order to get the impact the outcome, in order to influence in the way that you want. Now, when I was in my mid 20s, and working in London, with very high powered much older leaders in a business, I really had to align myself with specific advocates in the business in order to be able to create the impact and the influence that I wanted, there were certain things that I wanted to happen. And as somebody who was 2526, working with 56 year old men, I needed to pick and choose who I decided to align myself with in order to help me on my journey. And I think one thing that I would really encourage you to do as well is become somebody who is able to align and find advocates to help you go further. So that you know, you've got the self validation of you know, you've got a great idea, you know that what you're working for, is worth fighting for that there will be knows along the way, but that's not going to deter you that you are determined to get the outcome that you want, but that you're smart enough, and you're clever enough. And when I say clever, I mean, you know, you've got street smarts about you, you can read people, you know, who you need to align yourself with in order to take your cause the thing that you're standing against forward, to have people of influence that can help you break down walls and doors that you may not be able to do yourself, when Brene Brown, there's don't go through the world looking for evidence that you don't belong, because you will find it. And so this is where our self validation needs to come from is that when we are able to walk through the world, knowing that we belong, but we need to find our people, then we will be able to have the impact that we want, we will be able to create the community and the movement that we want. If you're somebody right now who is sitting in feeling like you're not able to influence in the way that you want, you're not able to create the change that you want. Just want you to know that it is possible for you to create that change. But you've just got to be somebody who is very tenacious, and somebody who understands how to bring others along and communicate in different ways and not take no for an answer, and continue to chip away and not give up when the first couple of nose or the first barriers or blocks or doors come up in the path that you're wanting to take. And that was just something that I really wanted to share with you. Because I think that when you're in a noisy world, and when there's so much going on, it can feel really overwhelming to try and achieve the things that you want to achieve. But if you continue to work on your own self validation every day where you know, you're building the evidence that you're capable of doing this, where you're building your own self esteem and self worth, if it's something that you need to work on where you're continuing to ask yourself, I may not be confident right now but am I willing to be courageous, then those are the things that are really going to matter. Those are the things that are going to make the biggest difference to you being able to do what you want to do and go after the things that you want to.