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Do you feel frustrated with your current situation and feel like you can’t express what it is you want? Maybe you even feel stupid because you can’t put into words what is troubling you. You aren’t stupid at all! You have put other people’s happiness above your own that when it comes to your own – you are disconnected from asking for what you want. What you need is clarity around the fogginess of the challenges you are facing, so that you can build your confidence back up and trust yourself again, especially as an entrepreneur.
Our guest on the podcast today is Transformational Coach, Alison Muir. She is the founder of Square Peg Coaching and is passionate about helping others find their place in the world. Her mission is to create a better world by helping her clients believe in themselves again, get clear about what it is they truly want in life and find the courage to take action. Only through accepting who we are can we create change.
In this episode, Alison and I dive into her journey of becoming a transformational coach, finding clarity and building your confidence as an entrepreneur, learning to trust yourself again based on your new found confidence, using your introversion as a strength, content that allows for deeper connection, and much more.
Corporate Team Leader to Transformational Coach for Introverts
It was a natural progression for Alison in her journey to Transformational Coach. She has always been helping others and looking at them as individuals in every role she has had. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to do after school, so she fell into a job in the food and beverage industry as a team leader and then moved up to a team manager position. She was really good at what she did and always treated her team as individuals rather than just assuming they would fit right in, which was one of her best skills. She really enjoyed the aspects of working with someone one-on-one and helping them develop, understand their skills, understand other people’s perspectives, working with other people, and going above that of seeing her team develop their careers and go on to new opportunities.
There were certain expectations though, about everyone doing their jobs exceptionally well, but this caused a sense of feeling undervalued as an employee for many of her peers. Although she was good at what she did, it didn’t light her up on a soul level.
She left her corporate career in her 40s with voluntary redundancy, her second marriage just starting, and decided to train as a Body Control Pilates Instructor. Even at her desk job, pilates was something that helped keep her sane. This was one of her greatest achievements, but it didn’t bring her the consistent income she was looking for and she went back into the corporate space.
She found a running coach, who also happened to be a life coach, that was able to help her discover that coaching was something she should look into since she loved helping people. After her cousin, Allen, was diagnosed with terminal cancer, she realized that she should get a grip and focus on something more important. After 20 years of being in the corporate world, she finally became a transformational coach and has been doing this work that she is passionate about for four years now.
Finding Clarity and Building Your Confidence as an Entrepreneur
Have you gone through a significant life event like bereavement, a broken relationship, lost your job, or gone through a really stressful work restructure? Whatever the circumstance is for you, it could be tied to your identity and to a future that you can no longer have. If you are questioning how you should confront your current situation, then that’s usually where coaching can come in with the help of Alison. She helps you in situations like this to gain clarity on the situation at hand so that you can reconnect to what’s most important and build your confidence back up. It allows you to get a better sense of who you really are, the ability to make peace with that situation, and to see the possibilities that your future now holds.
Alison notices a tendency for the clients she works with to be more women because of the fact that they are either in a caring profession or that they are a caretaker for their family. These women usually put others’ happiness before their own, but don’t want to make a fuss when it comes to their own happiness. When it does come to the moment that they need help, they don’t know what they want because of them putting others first. When it comes to these women asking for what they want, they’re totally disconnected from that and feel really guilty about even thinking they should think about what they want. Alison also says that there is a lot of peace about saying it’s okay to want something for yourself, it’s okay to look after what you need and to look after yourself because in doing that, you can help more people. Even when trying to express to others how they feel, it can cause them to feel stupid because they don’t know how to do that. It’s a vicious cycle that repeats itself, so that’s how you can get the clarity you need and build confidence in yourself.
Learning to Trust Yourself Again With Your New Found Confidence
The other kind of client Alison works with is those that have usually had childhood trauma and are determined to make a real difference. Have you found yourself in the same situation and decided to leave it all behind? Now that you have reached this point in your journey, it might make you question why you don’t feel good about it, you can’t feel the joy in your life, or your life feels empty. It’s really important for you at this time to:
Be kind to yourself in this situation.
Listen to yourself.
Ask for help when you need it.
Accept help when it is offered.
This is where the work Alison does is different because when she helps you there is no set goal other than to build that confidence back up and to help you feel happier. She works with your values along with letting you decide what your sessions will look like and what you want to work on. What is important to you during those sessions is what you work on because she doesn’t set a foundation for what is to be learned as each client’s needs are individualized. This helps you learn to listen to yourself, decide what’s right for you, and build that trust with yourself again for your confidence, intuition, and inner wisdom.
Using Your Introversion as a Strength, Not a Flaw
As an introvert, do you feel like you don’t fit in? Like you need to be extroverted and outgoing? In actuality, your introversion is a strength. Once you learn to accept that about yourself, you see the beauty in it after all the moments of beating yourself up about the way you are. It isn’t a negative flaw that you have and that realization is powerful.
Everything in my business and my life switched when I stopped trying to be somebody that I wasn’t because I felt like that’s what I needed to be successful. I started accepting who I was and really fell in love with who I am as a person instead of trying to change it. That’s the superpower we have as introverts. When you accept who you are, you can move forward or you can change. If you are constantly trying to be something that you’re not, you aren’t focusing on the real work, the real value, and the real joy because you are distracted by doing something else. Letting yourself be who you are and working from that space allows the rest to fall into place.
Content That Allows for Deeper Connection
Do you feel overwhelmed by scrolling through Instagram as an introvert? It can be hard to make those connections with your audience because all of the information that you scroll through in a matter of minutes – information overload. Alison mentions that social media to her is more surface level and even though she loves engaging on social media posts, there’s always something missing for her in that it’s just not deep enough. When it comes to the method that she uses to create deeper connections with her clients or leads, she prefers her website, blog posts, and about page. She is able to create content for her website that shows her personality, her style, and allows her audience to get to know her on a deeper level, especially with blog posts, and that’s what she focuses on.
Alison is a leader in a business network and meeting group and is a member of a business mastermind on social media. It’s all about being consistent, being on social media, doing all of the things – and she has done that. At the end of the day for her, if she is coaching people on how to show up in life in a way that’s true to themselves, she really feels deeply that she should be doing the same thing. Leading by example is what makes her happy, so that is what she is doing because she doesn’t want to be told she needs to do something, but rather needs to feel it’s the right thing for her.
Being Comfortable as an Introvertpreneur in a Room Full of Noise
If you are in the beginning stages of your business and are struggling, then Alison’s best advice for you is to take your time with it and not get distracted by the noise. She also says to find a fellow tribe where the values you hold are shared, like the Introvertpreneur Club, where there are people who understand your point of view, rather than joining a business mastermind with lots of people who love being on social media. Find a space that you feel comfortable in with people who think in a similar way to you. Not to say you shouldn’t challenge yourself, but in the beginning, you need to be in a safe space because it is challenging to start a business. You need the people who are understanding, rather than trying to push you out of your comfort zone and really build that resilience, strength, and that sense of identity with yourself in the beginning.
Protect your vision of what you’re doing, how you want to do it, and make it true for you, rather than getting caught up in all the noise going to endless webinars, or seminars on how to grow your email list, and how to join Clubhouse. Focus on how you want to connect with your clients, how you want to work, and if you want to work four days a week, start by working four days a week, so that you’re always in the right structure for what you want to achieve long term.
Allison gave so many incredible tips on building your confidence and finding clarity as an introverted entrepreneur on this episode of the podcast today. She shared her natural progression into becoming a transformational coach from being in the corporate space, how to find the clarity you’ve been looking for along with a new found confidence as an entrepreneur, trusting yourself based on your confidence journey, using your introversion as a strength and not a flaw, having and creating content for a deeper connection with your audience, and being comfortable as an introverted entrepreneur in a room full of noise.
If you want more information on working with Alison or want to read her blog posts then you can head over to her Square Peg Coaching website to learn more. Don’t forget to follow her on Instagram and Facebook for more tips on how to get more clear about the things you want in life.
Which one of Alison’s insightful tips stood out to you the most based on your current circumstances and what is one way you plan to reconnect to yourself?
a breakdown of this episode
[1:16] How Alison got started as a Transformational Coach and her background of what led up to that
[8:16] The two kinds of individuals that Alison coaches through Square Ped Coaching and what she can do to help them with find clarity and building confidence
[13:48] Letting your introversion be your strength because it’s not some negative flaw that you have
[15:27] Alison’s favorite marketing method for her business that allows her to create a deeper connection with her clients and leads
[19:32] Alison’s advice for introverts who are in the beginning stages of their business
If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to take a screenshot and tag me on your Instagram stories @introvertcoach and tell me your biggest takeaway!
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