How I got past visibility fears as an online entrepreneur — and how you can too

How to get past the fear of being seen online to build a successful coaching or healing business.

Getting visible as an online coaching or healing entrepreneur is key to finding clients and being successful, if people can’t see it, they won’t buy it.

The internet has turned the world into a global network and market place which has opened up new opportunities. This has enabled once small industries to flourish and grow at exponential rates.

The online personal development is one of those industries, and is predicted to be worth USD 56.66 billion by 2027.

There are thousands flocking to the coaching and personal development field with many business coaches who promise 6 figure success if you just implement their method.

So why, if it’s so easy, do so many entrepreneurs struggle to get their business to a sustainable level?

Being seen online makes many coaches, healers or therapists uncomfortable, meaning that they are held back from seeing the success they are dreaming of. The very real issue of visibility fear needs to be overcome in order to be successful.

It takes confidence and courage to create an online business.

Risk of rejection or criticism

Selling coaching or healing is often a personal brand. People buy from people that they can connect with, but that opens up the risk of feeling a personal rejection or criticism if someone doesn’t like or want what you are offering.

It can be hard not to take this personally and any fears or insecurities are magnified by the vulnerability of building an online business where the whole world can see what you are doing.

Visibility fears often show up as:

• worrying about what other people will think
• feeling like an imposter
• fear of failure
• fear of success
• perfectionism

These feelings or ‘blocks’ usually result from believing that they are not good enough.

Many coaches say that confidence comes from taking action, and to some extent this works. When someone takes an action and the outcome isn’t as bad as they feared, they will feel more confident next time they have to do the same thing.

However, if beneath it, they still don’t feel that they are ‘good enough’, then every time they have to do something new, it’s hard to find the courage. This means that every time they have a setback on their business journey, it feels like a personal rejection or failure.

How do I know? Because I’ve been there.

Fear of failure in business

A few years ago, I dreamed of leaving my corporate career. I was going through a spiritual awakening, fuelled in part by training to become a yoga teacher. My soul craved to do something that helped other people, something with purpose.

After experiencing my own burn-out, I wanted to set up an online coaching and yoga program for others going through a similar experience. One day, I saw a webinar for marketing an online yoga business and I felt like my dream was a possibility.

The new world of coaching was fascinating and I wanted to be part of it. I had always considered myself an intelligent woman and for as long as I could remember I’d wanted my own business. Unfortunately, I believed that I had to have a ‘career’ instead.

I was so excited at the thought of setting up an online business and yet, when it was time to put my offer out there, I froze.

“What if I fail?”

Doubts ran around my head like hamsters on a wheel:

• What would other people think of what I was doing? Would they judge me?
• If I put my offer out there and it failed, what would people think of me?
• What if my clients didn’t like what I was doing or didn’t get results?
• What if it was really successful and I was scared to leave the stability of my career?
• What if I became so busy that I had no time for friends and family?
• Who was I to do this?
• Who would want to buy from me?

I didn’t believe that I was good enough to be successful.

I’ve since found out that these thoughts and many others like them are really common and we will cover some solutions below.

Meanwhile, I shrunk back into my old life and told myself that at least I’d tried — but I really hadn’t! However, something kept tugging at my soul and it wouldn’t go away and, two long years later, I gathered up my courage and trained as a hypnotherapist.

Transfixed and delighted by my new career, I started to work online with clients around the world, quickly getting fantastic results and many referrals. Yet, when it came to promoting myself, I hit the same invisible wall of self-doubt as I had two years previously and my stream of clients started to dry up.

Believing in myself

I started to wonder what was wrong with me: other people were building successful online businesses, so why couldn’t I?

This time around I’d learnt enough about the mind to recognise that I had self-limiting beliefs and fears around failure, judgement and rejection — not to mention imposter syndrome and perfectionism!

I began a quest to let go of my fears, working with some great coaches, therapists and healers, until one day I had the most enormous shift! I felt complete and utter self-belief wash over me; I remember thinking, “This is what it feels like to truly believe that you are enough!”. Suddenly I didn’t give a hoot what anyone else thought: it was my life and I was entitled to do whatever I wanted with it.

The more confident I felt, the better the results my clients were having. I was able to feel comfortable sharing my story and accepted my mistakes as learning opportunities. I saw the world as full of potential and opportunities.

As I looked around and recognised the same limitations in many of my friends and colleagues, I realised how many of us feel constrained and trapped by what we believe about ourselves.

I got angry at how much time I’d wasted not believing that I was good enough. Angry at the society that tries to keep up in our limitations and feel like we are inadequate so that we buy something else that they promise us will make us feel whole but never does.

Can you imagine a world where everyone knows that they are good enough? A world where women are empowered to create whatever they want to in this life; knowing that they are safe to embrace who they truly are, and love, like and trust themselves?

What a truly amazing world that would be.

There is a reason that the personal development industry is growing so fast right now — people want and need to feel better about themselves. There is a demand for your services, if you can believe in yourself so will your clients.

How to believe in yourself more

Here are my top 5 tips to overcome self-doubt:

1. Create a list of the actions you need to do in order to create the success you want. Next to each one, write down how you feel about doing it. What is it that you believe about yourself that’s creating that feeling? Re-write those beliefs to be empowering new ones, and put the list up on the wall where you will see it every day.
2. Do a risk assessment — our brains are naturally programmed to look for danger and avoid risk, so thinking of the worst-case scenario comes easily to many people, but what is the chance of that actually happening? What is a more likely outcome? What is the best possible outcome? Use this to focus your mind if you catch yourself catastrophising.
3. If you’re worried about failing, think back to when things haven’t worked out before and identify what you learned as a result of that experience. By training your mind to see events as learning opportunities it removes the emotional charge of shame that accompanies the label ‘failure’
4. Write a love letter to your ideal client, imagining that you are already working with them, telling them how proud you are of all the growth that they are seeing and thank them for choosing to work with you. Feeling gratitude for things that you have not yet received creates a frequency of alignment and energetically opens the door to allow it to happen.
5. The universe is a mirror which reflects back what you think. If you are worried about what other people will think it’s a sign that you are judging yourself and others. Explore what judgements you are making, what beliefs you hold that are creating those judgements and how you could reframe your beliefs.

How I can help you

I help spiritual entrepreneurs believe at a soul level that they are good enough by healing their past emotional blocks, so they can have the confidence and courage to be visible as their authentic self to make their unique impact on the world. If you’re a spiritual entrepreneur that is feeling uncomfortable about being visible online, join my free Facebook group Soulful Confidence Collective for daily tips and motivation, masterclasses and free challenges to help you get confident to put yourself out there.

Helen Hardware is a Soulful Confidence coach and intuitive hypnotherapist.

She works with spiritual entrepreneurs globally through her online coaching and healing programs.

Helen is a published author and has been published on Thrive Global, Her Hussle Magazine and Complete Wellbeing.

www.helenhardware.com