Hello and welcome to today’s episode of The Born To Rise podcast. I’m your host, Cait Scudder, and we need to talk about pressure. This is something so many of us feel. It’s something that creeps into so many different launch processes, sales processes. It’s what makes us fall out of love with our businesses. It’s something we need to learn to find a different relationship with.  

We’ve all felt it: pressure to enroll a certain number of people in your program, pressure to sign. Pressure is this feeling of everything’s gonna collapse, everything’s gonna come in. I know that this is a feeling, it’s an emotion. It’s a thing that we feel at every stage of business, whether you feel pressured to sign your first client, whether you have already hit your first six-figure month and you’re like, Oh, shit, how am I going to do that again? How am I going to sustain this? How am I going to make this a regular thing? How am I going to do this again? I now have a team of people I know have higher overhead. I feel pressure in order to sustain that. 

Pressure is a thing that comes in at every stage and at every phase of the business. And it is our responsibility as business owners to learn how to cultivate a better, healthier relationship with pressure to enable ourselves to change the way that we allow pressure to dominate our thought pattern, our decision making patterns, the way that we show up, the way that we sell, the way that we launch, the way that we serve. We need to find greater ease and a greater rhythm that lets us take some of that excruciating high stakes pressure down. 

How To Detach Yourself From Pressure

So the first thing that I want to say and the most important thing about detaching from pressure, the absolutely essential thing is learning to detach our sense of self-worth, our sense of validity, our sense of belonging, our sense of potency, or sense of power. We need to learn how to detach that from whatever the goal is that we’re trying to achieve. 

I think for so many of us pressure is born from this feeling of if I don’t hit X result, if I don’t sign the new client, if I don’t have a 50k launch or 100k launch, if I don’t hit another six-figure month, if I don’t do this, then my worthiness and my worth is somehow decreased. If I don’t hit this number, if I don’t do this thing, I am not worthy. That is actually the root of my insecurity, the root of where I’m feeling the pressure is this self-imposed worth. Because oftentimes, that’s where the pressure is coming from. It’s a self-imposed pressure that’s rooted in a core feeling of, if I don’t hit this, I am not worthy. 

The Real Root Of Pressure

And let’s take that one step deeper, the real root, if we go all the way down, and that’s a phrase that I say in my coaching all the time, go deeper, go all the way down. What is all the way down? Underneath there is this sense of comparison pressure, most of the time. 

Unless you literally are at the breaking point where you’re not able to put food on the table for your family, and you’re about to be evicted from your house.  That’s real pressure. That’s legit real pressure. But for most of us, we are not on the brink. I’m not saying that’s not true for everyone. And I completely validate and acknowledge that the pressure –when it is truly life or death –is there. And that exists in some circumstances. 

But for 99% of the time, pressure is self-imposed,because down down down deeper, deeper, deeper, we have an expected timeline that we are not meeting. Go deeper still, most of the time, that timeline is rooted in comparison It is! I’m just going to call it. It’s rooted in comparison. It is rooted in this feeling of, if I don’t hit another big month, or if I don’t have this kind of goal, I’m a fraud. I’m not what I said I was. I’m not as good as I thought I was. I’m not moving as quickly as she is. I’m not doing as good of a job as I want to be doing. I should be further ahead at this time. 

There are all sorts of pressure that can come in. Oh, this person scales this faster, this person has had this much success in this amount of time. So I should be doing that, what’s wrong with me. And we can start to watch what everyone else is doing. We can watch what everyone else is creating. By the way, this happens not just with financial milestones. I’ve seen a lot of high power women who impact and coach communities of dozens, hundreds, 1000s of people. And there’s another kind of comparison that can come in. 

The kind of comparison that comes in when we see other coaches and we see their clients and their results. This other weird kind of pressure and comparison that comes in is, my clients aren’t hitting as great of results as I am. I feel this pressure that I want my people to perform as well as theirs. 

We do this comparison thing, multiple angles, whether it’s how much money we’re making compared to other people, whether it’s how well our clients are doing compared to other people, whether it’s the pressure of I am being overly perfectionistic on myself and putting all of this undue stress and pressure. 

My intention with this episode is to unpack piece by strategic piece where this pressure comes from so that we can start to free ourselves from it. Because it is only when we free ourselves from this constant pressure, that we can actually make an impact in this industry. That we can actually impact our clients and we can actually create the change, fill our programs and have fun doing this business we were born to do. 

I think the first thing that we need to let go of in our brains is this sense of my worth is attached to x, y, z outcome. I’m going to speak to something that was raised recently. Just here on this live stream of I feel this pressure to deliver for my clients. I want my clients to be happy whether you are a done for you service provider, whether you are a coach or a consultant or a mentor. All of us have a certain kind of deliverable. We want our clients to have a fantastic client experience. We want our people to experience breakthrough transformation, to have a positive relationship with us, to get a positive outcome. 

What Boundaries Have To Do With Pressure

Here is the thing. This is where I’m gonna come back to this theme of boundaries. That’s its own theme and we’re gonna do another episode strictly on that. But pressure comes when we are overburdening ourselves because we are connecting our sense of self-worth, our sense of validity, our sense of a seat at the table, based on an outcome that we want. 

So it’s not just I want a $50k a month or a 50k launch. It’s that if I don’t get this, I am somehow unworthy. We need to be able to create separation between our worth, our validity, our space at the table, and this pressure that we’re putting on ourselves. But this perfectionism, this desire to serve our people, well, that has a light side, it has a positive side. If you are somebody who feels that, who breathes that, who cares enough and has integrity enough, beyond just getting somebody’s stripe details or getting somebody money in the door; if you care enough to actually be invested in your people, which I am sure that you do. I’m sure you care deeply about your people and not just care about your bank account. 

Side note, that’s the best sales trick you’ll ever learn is actually to give a shit about your people. Your business will grow itself from there and serve them well. But here’s the thing, there is a difference between caring about being invested in, showing up for your side of the equation, showing up for what is possible for you to do inside of the container that you are set to deliver, inside of and your client’s reaction and result. 

The only thing you are responsible for is showing up to the 100% capacity that you have to deliver inside of the scope of the program, or the deliverables or whatever is inside of what you have set up. That’s what you can do. That’s what’s in your court. 

So any undue pressure comes from wanting to control their experience, what’s going to happen, how they perceive and take things. We need to be able, as business owners and as CEOs, to unhook our sense of worthiness, our sense of doing good in the world, our sense of being powerful at what we do from this need to over please and bend and contort. Because that’s where all sorts of boundary stuff come up. Again, we’re gonna record a whole other episode on boundaries.

But it is not your job, to stress yourself out so much that you hyperventilate into needing to over-deliver and making you really stressed out and putting a ton of pressure on yourself. It is your job to do what you said you were going to do and do it to the best of your possible ability. Show up with the most amount of integrity that you possibly can to serve. That’s your job. 

So let’s come back to where the roots of pressure really come from. They come from needing to prove ourselves. Proving our worth is a fundamental mindset of scarcity. Pressure is born from a mindset that says, if I don’t hit this number now, I am going to not hit the number that I want. And again, for most of us that doesn’t mean life or death. That doesn’t mean make or break what it means is our my egos bruised. I thought I could sustain or I thought I was at a level of sustaining x k months. But then I had a dip, I must be a fraud or my launch projections for the year said I was supposed to have 100k launch or 10k launch or whatever the number is. But I came in under that. Oh no. Now I have to make up for that.

My Own Experience With Pressure

My invitation to you is what would happen if you stopped making any of your numbers mean anything about what got to be possible for you from a financial perspective? Let’s go down this rabbit hole for a second. I shared this on a clubhouse that I did a couple of months ago last year. I had a launch for one of my signature programs Nail Your Niche. It was the smallest launch that I had ever had for the program. Normally, I’ve had up to 30-35 women inside of this. For this round you guys, I had six people, I was going through a cross-country move. By the way, this was last year. The year that we became a seven-figure company, I had a six-person launch. And this was super unusual for us. It was tiny, and I felt all of this pressure. 

I felt like, Cait You are a fraud. Who do you think you are? What kind of business coach only has six people inside of a program? Okay, I had all of those thoughts running through my own head and yet, I know how to coach myself. I have coaches and mentors who support me in my own process. One of the biggest internal tasks that I had was unhooking myself from this narrative that was crippling with pressure. 

That said, this means anything about your ability to make more in the future about your ability to serve these people, when we unhook ourselves and our sense of worth from a number that we hit and then the pressure that we mount on top of ourselves that becomes a dead weight. When we unhook ourselves from that, we free our time, our energy up enough to serve and serve so well. 

So let me tell you what happened. I served those women inside of that program so freaking well. We had an 80%-83% turnover rate. Five out of those six women transitioned into the next program that we sold after that, and one of those women went on to become a six-figure client of mine. A $100,000 private client for the year. So the moral of the story is to soften your gaze, soften your perspective, soften your lens, soften the way that you are clinging so literally to the performance of any particular thing, because that’s where the pressure comes in. 

When we see a financial dip or when we see a launch not go as well, my new attitude that I adopt with myself, in my own business, it’s something that I teach to all of my clients is how can we have fun with this? How can we be in curiosity of this? How can we not make any of these numbers mean anything? Of course, we analyze our data. Of course, we’re looking at how can we be launching better and leaner and more effectively, over time again, and again and again. 

But how can I truly start to see what is going on here in a bigger perspective? How can I see these relationships that I’m building the people I’m serving? How can I prioritize that is the most important thing and remove any sense of pressure needing it to pay off immediately needing to see the turnaround? 

Another example is, I had a client who I was speaking to, literally back in early 2018. She’d been following me since early 2018, I had a sales call with her in 2018 for private coaching. Which then, I don’t even know what it was, it was $8,000 for three months or something. Now it’s $8,000 a month. We were speaking back then but she didn’t end up signing. Again, I could have put so much pressure on myself, I could have said oh my gosh, Cait, I’m just not good at sales calls. I need this pressure. If I have a lead that comes in the door, how many of us have felt that right? If we have a lead who comes in the door, and then they don’t convert, we feel this pressure of now I’ve got to find another person or now I’ve got to convert a new person or now I have to find another thing. 

We get into the state of pressure, pressure pressure. What happened with this woman, she stayed in my field, she stayed connected, other launches came up, other programs came up, she almost joined but she didn’t. She didn’t come in. At the end of last year, beginning of this year, I was launching a mastermind. She reached out of nowhere, right? But really, she’d been nurtured by me for years. She was like, I’m ready to go. I know I want to do this. Paid in full. Now she’s a six month mastermind client, right? 

What Happens When You Take The Pressure Down

You guys, I literally have dozens of these stories. In my own business. I have dozens of these stories in my client’s businesses. Here’s what I know to be true. When we take the pressure down in our businesses, when we learn how to regulate our own nervous systems, regulate our own sense of worth, regulate our own sense of power and potency, regulate our own need and attachment for a particular outcome to happen at a particular time. 

When we take that pressure down, we breathe space back into our businesses, we return play and momentum and authenticity and freshness and magnetism back into our marketing. We become unattached to the outcome that we are after at the same time as we stay so committed to that outcome. My commitment to each launch that I do, even when we don’t hit six-figures, even when that doesn’t happen instantaneously. 

With the direct launch that we do, I remain open, not pressuring myself but open for that six-figure return to come around. Whether that person ascends to the next offer, whether they join a mastermind, whether they become a private client, whether they come on a retreat, whatever that is. That is one part sales, one part structural flow. And this is something we go into in-depth inside of Sales Mastery Accelerator. But it’s part of having a structural sales ecosystem so that you don’t have to put pressure on yourself. You’re not putting all your eggs in one basket. And if a launch doesn’t go, well, then you’re literally scrambling, right? It’s part structure, but it is so much internal. It’s so much mindset. It’s so much calibrating your own sense of worth your own sense of worthiness, your own sense of power and potency and potential to keep earning money and generating money-generating big results serving people with depth and soul and character. 

That is where we need to unhook ourselves from pressure. That is where we need to stop making our impose timelines mean anything and whether we meet them, go ahead of them or behind them. It doesn’t mean anything about our potential for making money into the future. We need to start expanding our sense of possibility. We need to start expanding our sense of what gets to be possible in the work that we do, in the money that we make and the impact that we create. 

When you learn to emotionally regulate enough to take that pressure down, some questions that I find to be very, very helpful when you are in the process of taking that pressure down are, where do you need to nourish yourself more? Where do you need to detach? Where do you need to de-stress? Where do you need to go and stop focusing on this? 

That phrase a watched kettle doesn’t boil or a watched pot doesn’t boil? It’s so true in our businesses. Where can you bring a little bit more lightness and a little bit more play? Because I’ll tell you what, when you stop fixating with his energy of pressure, which is very not magnetic, when you stop pressurizing things, that’s when the grace gets to come in. That’s when the momentum gets to come in. That’s when the movement gets to come in. If you haven’t done that, if you haven’t made that part of your commitment to the way that you run your business, this is your invitation to do that.  

I’m so excited. I am so here for this disruptive perspective on what we need to bring into sales, taking down the pressure bringing back the heart. Bringing back the play, bringing back the ease, bringing back the expanded sense of perception and possibility. Because I am here to tell you guys, the launch ain’t over. When the launch is over. It goes on and on and on. 

It’s about the way that you mentally, emotionally and energetically stay in the game. It’s about the connection and service that you deliver, even if you only have six people inside of a program. Because that lives on and on and on and on. Where can you take the pressure down? Where can you remove some of the self-inflicted comparison rooted scarcity or rooted senses of you’re doing it wrong, you’re going too slow, etc, etc.? Where are you inflicting that on yourself? Where are you telling yourself that you are not fast enough? Good enough? On time enough? How can you unhook from those narrative? How can you unhook from those narratives once and for all and decide to do business a different way and decide that actually, that’s not the way that ever felt good to you? So why would you possibly try to emulate that? 

I’m telling you, when you do this, you will stand out in this industry, you will stand out as somebody with integrity with somebody who is doing things differently with somebody who is so magnetic and deep in her resonance in her truth in her power, that people will be lining up to work with you. I can promise you that because I’ve seen it time and time again. When you operate without that inherited sense of pressure and scarcity. It impacts the depth of service that you can bring to your clients and impacts the depth of your launches. It impacts the longevity of the way that you serve your clients. It impacts Everything.

I love you guys so much. Thank you so much for tuning into this episode and I will see you again soon. Lots of love everyone. Bye