Why High Achievers Miss Their Own Success and How to Stop

INTRO: [00:00:00] After generating over a million dollars in sales and selling one of her businesses with a single email, your host Kathryn Thompson, takes an unconventional approach to marketing and sales. So if you are ready to tap into a more powerful way to be seen, heard, and a Sought after Entrepreneur in your industry without having to spend endless hours marketing your business and chasing clients, you are in the right place.

Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast is here to help you ditch the cookie cutter one size fits all approach to marketing, and use your unique energy to effortlessly attract the most aligned clients. When you do this, you can spend less time marketing your business and more time doing your soul work and enjoying the richness of your life.

Welcome to Be The Sought After Entrepreneur Podcast, and here's your host, Kathryn Thompson.

Kathryn Thompson: Hey, hey. I am super stoked that you're tuning this week's episode, and I cannot wait to dive into this [00:01:00] topic because I wanna share with you sort of a recurring theme that's been presenting itself in my world, and also something that I've navigated for a huge part of my business journey, entrepreneurship journey, corporate career, you name it.

So this is gonna be really appealing to you if you're a high achiever and you've got really high standards for yourself, and you spent a vast majority of your life. Chasing success in a lot of ways, but always sort of on this path of evolution and growth and wanting to optimize and improve who you are so that you could reach sort of your highest potential in this life that we're living.

And if that sort of resonates with you as a high achiever, then like I said, it's gonna be really. Intriguing for you to kind of take a listen to based on my own story and then the patterns that I see sort of recurring and what I kind of call our Achilles heel, but also one of our greatest superpowers.

And that really is our ability to be hypercritical and not any like [00:02:00] self-deprecating kind of way where we're like really mean to ourselves. Now that can be the case for sure. We can be very self-critical, but we have this like. Critical lens that we look through the world and we're able to spot where things need to be improved, where things could be optimized, where we can innovate, where we can be doing things better, you name it.

But the problem is, is that we look through this hypercritical lens and we focus on the things that need fixing, need improvement, and we get so hyper-focused on that, that we lose sight of. All of the really beautiful things that are working in our life and our business, and this is a pattern that I've started to witness not only in my own business and the work that I do, but also in a lot of the clients that I work with because most of the women that come into my world are, are high achievers.

They have. Exceptional backgrounds, you know, 20 years, decades of experience in the work that they do. Lots of them are doctors. [00:03:00] Lots of them are striving for PhD. They have masters. They've got the certifications, you name it. They've held exceptional careers. They've done exceptional work, won the awards, published books.

The list goes on and on. And if you're somebody like that, you're probably gonna resonate even more with what I wanna share with you, because one of the things that I've learned in my own journey is that. I never really stopped long enough one to celebrate, and that might seem like a duh, Catherine, like, I've heard people say this, you know, you need to celebrate your wins and all the sorts of things.

But I wanna share with you a story that just happened recently that then sort of amplified or shone a light on sort of this pattern that I go through when I launch something new or create something new or put something out into the world that I know is exceptional and is amazing. And then what sort of happens on the back end of that?

Because I'm seeing this in the work that I'm [00:04:00] doing with a lot of the entrepreneurs that I work with, that then ends up. Robbing us of our joy, robbing us of our accomplishments, and keeps us on that perpetual hamster wheel of needing to constantly be achieving and a little bit performative, right? It's this constant performance of needing to achieve, needing to chase greatness, and then simultaneously needing that acknowledgement in order to sort of keep going and to.

Feel recognized in the work that we're doing. Now, I'm not saying that we don't want to be recognized or we don't want to be acknowledged. 'cause I think this is the other side of this that I wanna sort of flip on its head in a very counterintuitive way because I think a lot of times we hear don't seek outside validation, right?

Don't chase the validation of other people. It doesn't matter what anybody else says. Clap for yourself. You know, acknowledge yourself. Clap for yourself first, and I think that's important. I really do [00:05:00] think that self appreciation, self acknowledgment, self recognition is really important. I also think that it's really important that I.

When people are delivering exceptional work, we get into the habit of acknowledging it. And that can be really hard when we're not acknowledging ourselves. So I wanna share a story with you because I think it's really important to sort of ground this in with my own story that hopefully you can relate to in your own life and, and maybe start to see some of the aha moments that I started to recognize.

So. If you've been in my world for a while and you've listened to my stuff and you're on my email list, this won't come to a surprise to you. In that, recently I launched an AI powered conversion copywriting system, which in my opinion is absolutely exceptional and epic, and there's many reasons why it's epic.

And this podcast isn't to discuss how epic it is and all the thing that, all the things that are in it. However, it's epic, right? It took 25 years of my [00:06:00] experience, my knowledge. All of this, the work that I've done, the successes I've had, the failures I've had, what's worked, what hasn't worked in order to build this unique suite of specialists.

The other brilliant thing about it is, is that. I'm continuing to create more specialists based on what the community wants. So if you want a specialist to write your website, if you want a specialist to write social media posts, if you want a specialist to write ads, those are how unique each one of these specialists are and that they're very precisely created to deliver you results.

And proven results based on the outcome and the vehicle in which you're communicating, which in my opinion, isn't something that's common, particularly in the AI space. 'cause most people that are using and leveraging AI in their business have either cloned themselves, like I'm cloning myself as an expert.

And that way I can reach more people with my clone, which I don't think is a bad thing, right? I don't think it's a bad [00:07:00] thing to have you as an expert program that people can then ask you questions and get your feedback and all that stuff, and or people are creating custom GPTs that you still have to learn how to prompt in order to get the results that you want.

Where I went a little bit differently is I created these unique specialists that are precisely designed and precisely programmed on the backend to deliver on the thing that they're experts in, right? So it's not one big. Programmed custom GPT that will then deliver you messaging on this and copywriting on landing pages and all the things.

Because as you know, to be a specialist, you have to specialize in the thing, right? It's kind of like a heart surgeon or a brain surgeon, right? There's the generalist doctor who didn't specialize in. Heart or in the brain. And so you wouldn't ne necessarily hire that generalist to [00:08:00] do your heart surgery.

You'd hire a heart specialist, right? And that's similar to how I envisioned this and created this. I didn't want to create a custom GPT that then you prompted saying like, Hey, can you write me emails on this? Or Can you write me ads on this? Can you write me? You know, a landing page in my voice on this, I wanted to create specific specialists that then served very specific things within your business.

It would like, it'd be like hiring a team of specialists so that you, that you would have in your business, which is, in my opinion, epic. And the beauty of it is, is that these specialists are continuing to grow and building more of them right. And we've got beautiful ideas of what's coming through. And I did that.

I built it, I learned it. I've been, you know, self-studying AI for the last three years. I've been in some of the leading AI marketing rooms with creators, you name it. And I've silently behind the scenes was learning this stuff. And the reason I was, was because I didn't know what I wanted to do with it.[00:09:00] 

So. Between January and May. I felt like I was evolving my business, but also trying to figure out how AI integrated within that. I didn't wanna rush to market. I didn't want to just create something on a whim. I really wanted it to be intentional. I really wanted it to be something that I. Would really transform people's businesses and they have access to.

And they have access to. Without that big ticket price tag that you would pay a conversion copywriter like me to write your sales page, right? Which can start mine start at like 5,000 up. I know people that charge $25,000 a sales page. It just depends on you, your business and what you're charging and all those sorts of things, but access to that level of specialty.

Is not something that a solopreneur or somebody who's just starting out or just doesn't have the budget for that type of specialist have access to. So to me, I was like, wow, AI has the possibility to close the gap in a way for a certain level of business that isn't replacing [00:10:00] copywriters or marketers and all the things, as I've often said, you still need to be the orchestrator behind it.

You still need the brains behind it, which is what these specialists really are. 'cause I program them. So I sat with it, I built it. I took the time. I didn't really talk a lot about it, and I launched it and I launched it to a very small wait list, and I sold out almost half of those within 10 minutes, literally.

And I'm not saying that to glorify or to make a grandiose claim, it quite literally was I had never experienced anything like this in my business, by the way, other than my brick and mortar. When I used to launch the barrels, when I used to announce barrels, those barrels would sell out within minutes.

And I remember people getting frustrated like. I didn't even know you were launching it. I called literally 30 minutes later and you're already sold out. Like that's kind of how I felt in that moment. I hadn't experienced anything like that in my online business where I announced something and I could literally see my inbox with notifications going like right to 10, like within minutes, and [00:11:00] I was only opening it to 20 people because I want a beta test it, but I also wanna make sure that the technology was working and that people were great, and I just didn't want to open it to this large group capacity.

Because I didn't know how I could manage it and the usage of it and all those sorts of things. And so the doors aren't opening again until September, but I got ready to launch it. There's usually that hype, that energy around it. The excitement, and then this might sound really familiar to you, is like post-launch.

You can feel this sort of dip of energy, right? You kind of go, woo, and there's this like sort of settling that happens and I feel that when I launch things, when I put things out there, when I'm excited about things and then what I call, there's this like post-launch period or promotional period where there's a lull of energy that you kind of come back down and sort of settle within and it's in that period that I find my brain gets the noisiest.

Meaning. [00:12:00] There's a lot of thoughts that go through. Like, what if people don't like it, or, I haven't heard anything about it. Right? Like within seconds people are supposed to be raving about it. Let's be real. That doesn't really happen unless it's something that you immediately buy and immediately try, right?

Usually it takes some time for people to try it, test it out, figure out if they like it, and then they'll start to sort of rave about it or talk about it, or compliment about it or whatever, right? But there's this moment in the silence, as I call it. Is when the noise gets loud. And I see this with a lot of high achievers who put things out into the world and they are exceptional, right?

They're absolutely brilliant. They're absolutely exceptional. But there's this moment of silence where we don't pause for a moment to acknowledge how exceptional we are. And it's often in reflection back to us if we have that reflection from other people that are like, that was exceptional. You know, I had clients that were like, you told me about this.

And within two weeks it was launched. Granted, I [00:13:00] was learning it slowly, quietly, but the minute I was like, it's go time to build it. Within a two week period, I had it built and launched. That's a pure manage gen thing. We're known for that sort of stuff. We move very quickly when we're in alignment and going, and it was in those moments of reflection back to me that I was like.

Wow, that is actually exceptional and it's in that reflection back that I also realize as a high achiever, it's really hard to accept sometimes and receive. I don't know if you feel it, and it's something that I would love to invite you to do when somebody compliments you, just. Take inventory of the emotion, the feeling, the sensations that are going on in your body.

'cause this is a, a really great indication of your receptivity to receiving praise, to receiving acknowledgement and recognition and not just surface. Right? When someone tells you you're exceptional, [00:14:00] is it natural for you to deflect that? Is it natural for you to. You know, change the topic. Is it natural for you to look down or look away or not be able to make eye contact with a person that is actually acknowledging you?

I would love for you to just start to take inventory of that, because this is what I call that critical point where I. We get so micro-focused and tightly focused on what isn't working and or what we're not doing enough of or what we're not doing good enough at and or waiting for that shoe to drop.

Right. I'm just waiting and bracing for. A complaint or for something not to work or somebody to say that they didn't like it or that first cancellation, because this is set up as a membership, right? Where our emotions get sort of attached to a. The negative feedback, and I don't even wanna call it negative 'cause it's not negative, it's [00:15:00] just feedback.

It's just action, right? Someone unsubscribing or somebody getting out of your membership or deciding not to renew with you is not a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. We just view through the lens of the critical lens of the high achiever that it is, right? Well, what could I have done better or what could I have changed to keep them ongoing with you and nothing is forever.

Nothing lasts forever, and so it's normal to have a normal client churn. It's normal for people to move on. It's actually a good thing if people move on and evolve and elevate beyond what you've created, then they, then you've accomplished the thing that you set out to create, right? In a lot of ways, obviously, if you're getting tons of complaints and people aren't liking it, but here's what I know about high achievers, and here's what I know about the service delivery or the products they sell or whatever.

It is rare that they have a problem with complaints. It is rare that they have people [00:16:00] not happy with a service or asking for a refund. It's rare because they deliver exceptional services. I. Now, it's not to say that you will never have a complaint. It's not to say that you will never not have a bad review.

The problem is, and this is our Achilles heel, is that we get so tightly focused on the critical complaint or the quote unquote construction con constructive feedback, however you wanna classify that. We get so hyper-focused on it. The one star review on Google, right? I remember. That in my brick and mortar.

And the one star review that we got was actually from another owner in the city, which I don't think he realized that his name was attached to his Google account. And we could actually see that it was an owner just giving us a negative review because he was competitive and he, and he didn't like that we opened the store in the city.

Right. And I was like. But we get hyper-focused. Well, what are people gonna say on that one negative review? And I remember my husband often saying to me, Catherine, it's like one negative review. [00:17:00] Or if there's one batch of wine or two batches of wine that goes south in the production, that's normal. Right?

Nothing is perfect. And I think the wine store really prepared me for the online business world in a lot of ways because. It was food grade stuff that we were creating. And there was a chance that something could go sour, right? We could have a bad batch of wine, we could have our filters maybe not work the best way when we were filtering it.

And then there was a lot of sediment. It was homemade, quote unquote wine or store made wine. So we didn't have the high production levels as like a winery would have with the level of sulfites and all the things that you put in it. And so. They didn't last that long shelf life. So if somebody bought wine and two years later cracked it and was like, well, this bottle isn't great, or there was one bad bottle of the batch.

Maybe the bottle didn't get sanitized correctly. But what he reminded me of, and he's in the tech world, and I want to tie this into tech world because I think that if [00:18:00] you have ever worked in a tech startup, or you're familiar with tech startups or you're familiar with startup businesses in general beyond the personal brand or the service business, online business coaches, courses, creators, you name it.

They have a different mindset that they approach things with. And this is where I want to couple this with the high achiever because there's this mindset that there's going to be things that don't work. There's going to be things that don't turn out the way that we wanted them to. It's only when there's a, a large percentage of that, right?

So, like my husband used to remind me, Catherine, if 5% out of all of the percentage of wine that you sold. Was went south, which we were nowhere near that. We were about 1%. He's like, that's still a decent out of all of the wine that you sold, if if 5% of it right, it's when you get complaints to 40% or 50%.

Right. Then yeah, there's something that you might want to investigate, but like at [00:19:00] 1%, that is not bad. That is not bad. And also. Wine is very subjective. Similarly, so is coaching similarly, so is my conversion copywriting system, right? It might work for some and it might not work for others. That is okay. We can't control the experience of everybody.

We also can't be certain that everybody that comes into our world is going to find what we do. Epic, exceptional, life changing, whatever it is. There will always be people that. Either don't jive with it or don't align with it or don't like it or whatever, and that is okay. And that was like a turning point for me, I think, in the brick and mortar because I was constantly bracing for like the complaint or someone to come back and say, my wine isn't good, or I have a lot of sediment, or it didn't turn out or whatever.

Right? I remember those first early days, those first 40 batches of wine that came through on the first day. It was a very clear [00:20:00] indication of where my nervous system was at and also what I was trying to control. And that was perfection. And that is something we can't control. And that is classic of a high achiever, right?

We've got very high standards. We set very exceptional goals, and we often strive to meet them and we do meet them, and then it's in that silence, that in-between moment where it's quiet. We start to brace for things to not work or complaints to come through or people to be unhappy or whatever it is. And it's that worst case scenario that starts to happen that we're holding onto.

And as I mentioned, the 1% of people that whine didn't turn out for whatever reason. I was so micro-focused on that, that I was. Completely oblivious to the success I was creating in the 99% of the time, and that is what I want to sort of [00:21:00] reframe for you today. If you are that high achiever that is somewhat losing the joy in your business, or you feel like you've lost your magic, maybe you've lost your confidence, because I think this weighs on our confidence when we're so tightly focused on.

The thing's not working or that negative review that comes through, or the feedback that we didn't want, or the person that unsubscribed or the client that didn't renew, we, our confidence gets a little rattled if that happens, and then we get micro-focused on it, and then we think, well, we're not doing good enough, or we're not showing up good enough, or whatever it is, my product or service isn't good enough, right?

Which is the underlying root core wound for many high achievers. And when we can see that, we can see how it's a superpower. We can see how it, IM, we want to improve and optimize and innovate, but we can also see how that can rob us of our joy. But it can also diminish our confidence. It can also [00:22:00] really dilute our magic in a lot of ways because we lose that conviction around what it is that we're here to do.

We lose that confidence of like, no, I'm a actually exceptional at what I do, and it was in my backyard after I launched the AI system. In that moment of silence where I caught myself going, it's, it's eerily quiet and it's eerily quiet because we were post-launch, we had sold out, all the spots were filled, and it was like I was waiting, right?

It was that silence of waiting and then I was like, I'm actually really fucking proud of myself. I'm really proud of what I build. I'm. Really proud of what I've launched and I'm really proud of the women that jumped in in this round. I'm really proud of it and I need to like acknowledge that and appreciate that before other people start throwing their appreciation at me or whatever it is.

Right. And also when I do have people tell me that it's exceptional and I do have people that say that it's life changing and [00:23:00] I do have people telling me how epic it is that I receive that. Not with resistance. Not with deflection, not with anything. Right. I had a client recently tell me, Catherine, if it wasn't for you.

I wouldn't have found the confidence to really put myself out there, and this woman is exceptional. Like she's on track for her PhD. She's spent years working in the military like she is an exceptional human being and exceptional at the work that she does and brilliantly gifted. And that's what I'm saying, that like some people will think, oh, well the high achievers or the go-getters or whatever, like they don't struggle with this.

Yeah, actually we do. Right. And in that moment I was like, I received that. Thank you. I received that. What I would've done in the past was deflect it. No, it's all you. I had nothing to do with it. No, I wasn't part of this, but no, I held space for her. I held space for her. I supported her and have been supporting her.

So yeah, I'm going to acknowledge and receive [00:24:00] that compliment, that acknowledgement, that recognition. Even though, yes, she's the one who had to do the work, of course, but I was a partner on that journey with her, and I noticed in that moment I wasn't deflecting. And I wanna circle back to sort of tech startups because I think what I've learned in the launching of this AI conversion copywriting system, it's a tech product.

It uses ai, it's custom built specialists. I'm relying on tech for it to function and the people that have helped me develop it through the tech side of things, right? Creating the platform, those sorts of things that I'm, that's not my zone of genius. I've learned so much from them because I could have all the requests in the world of what I wanted.

And they were so good at setting boundaries of what's possible right now in this moment based on priority. And they said to me, Catherine, [00:25:00] we need to get this out into market. And there's always room for improvement, but there's always going to be glitches. Like there will, there nothing is perfect. There will always be glitches.

There will always be time when tech is down. I mean, there's many times where CLO has been down, or Shashi PT has been down, or even Instagram for Christ's sake goes down. Right? I was just in Facebook ads recently and I was like, it was clunky and wasn't working and all the things, and so I'm sharing this with you because.

If there's anything about the tech build out world that I have now entered into and honestly was like something I never really wanted to enter into because I know that how tech is, right? I know that there, it can be glitchy and clunky and all the things and not always work. I. And I was like, can I handle that from a capacity level?

Can I handle the feedback of like, one of your specialists spit out this and it wasn't in alignment or whatever. Right? And, and AI will do that, right? AI is known to [00:26:00] hallucinate. We know this. Um, if you don't know this, it's common knowledge, right? It, it does hallucinate from time to time. 'cause it's not perfect, nor are we though, right?

And there are times that we're doing the best that we can with what we have in that moment. And that's all that matters. But what I learned from the tech side of, and the tech world is, is that, and we learned this with from the iPhone, right? I think people, lots of people have used this analogy, but I learned this in the tech, from the tech world is like sometimes you just have to get things out there and then you want people to break shit.

Right? And a lot of my clients that have come in have said that to me. I'm gonna go and try and break it. I said, please go try and break it. That was the mindset shift that I needed to sort of wrap my brain around, but also that was reflected back to me working with developers because they were like.

Shit's gonna break. Right? And my husband is a wireless engineer and so this is, and he, so he manages tech all the time, and this is his life. He's like, this is what we do, right? Like, shit goes down all the time and it always breaks. And [00:27:00] you actually want things to break. You want people to break things.

You want people to test and try it, which is why I kept it at at a beta of 20. And I'm doing that until September because I want people to use it and I want to get user cases behind it. And this is how tech approaches things, right? It is like, I'm gonna put the thing out there, I'm gonna have users, and yeah, I'm going to completely prepare myself for critical feedback and I'm gonna prepare myself for things not working, and I'm gonna prepare myself for that.

And I'm also gonna prepare myself for people loving it and raving about it. And that's okay. And the analogy with the iPhone that I think maybe many of you have heard is like the iPhone started with iPhone one, and then it's launched new iPhones, right? You see this with tech all the time. There's updates all the time, improvements.

Cajabi does it right? You can submit what kind of tools you want, and then eventually their developers will create it. They can't be perfect out of the gate. They can't have all the bells and whistles out of the gate, [00:28:00] right? iPhone started the same way most tech companies do. Most product companies do, right?

They do iterations of the product to improve it based on use, use usage cases. Studies based on what people want. You know, within the first week and the first live workshop, I learned that my people all wanted, memory was important. And when I first launched, I thought privacy was more important and, and having that privacy from a data perspective, well, I learned very quickly.

They're like, no, I want the memory. I want this thing to be able to remember me. And within a week. We developed the memory so that we could launch that to the group. But again, when you're launching something for the first time, you, you can know what people are gonna be in interested in, of course. But then there's gonna be lots of like eye-opening things.

And I think that. This kind of ties back to the whole thing that if we're not receptive to receive recognition and we're not receptive [00:29:00] to receive, you know, validation from people, we're gonna be equally closed off to feedback and equally re reactive to it, which then closes off our, our ears and our ability to listen to what do people actually want and.

To me, if we can listen to what people want and not turn ourselves inside out to appease everybody, right? Again, I think that's the one of the greatest lessons of working with developers and tech companies is that you can't meet everybody's needs. Everybody will have a request, but there's priorities that you've gotta focus on and you've gotta think about it in that capacity, knowing that.

You are gonna be able to improve. That can be a hard pill to swallow for a high achieving perfectionist who's like, no, it's gotta be perfect outta the gate. Which is why many people sit on their ideas for years and they don't actually launch it and or they launch the thing that's like the safe thing to launch.

'cause I'm not gonna launch the thing I really wanna launch 'cause I'm just gonna [00:30:00] stay safe and protect myself with the thing I know I can deliver exceptionally. And that's where we miss out on that sort of stretch opportunity. But why I am sharing this all with you is because there are moments, I think in the journey, and this is the theme I've started to see, is that we can get so hyperfocused and tightly focused on what isn't working.

And when I actually boil that down with people, it's very similar to my brick and mortar. It's very si. Similar to my online business, it's usually 1%. It's one person, it's 1% of the business, and they're looking through that lens going, oh man, I didn't have that client renew. Or Oh man, I got constructive feedback from a client.

Or Oh man, I got someone tell me that they hated my thing. I dunno, it can be that extreme, right? Like this is a colossal fail and this thing doesn't work, or whatever it is, right? And we can receive those and then we get so tightly focused on it that we lose sight of. [00:31:00] Success immediately. All of what we've built and how far we've come sort of just starts to dissipate and like blur, right?

And we get so focused on like trying to fix that thing. And again, from the tech world, my husband being in tech, he's like, don't focus on that. Like do not focus on that or put all of your priorities and energy into that one person, that one thing. Focus on all of the things you're doing right? And if you get to the point of, wait a minute, I'm getting 50% of the time, I'm getting complaints, well then, yeah, you're gonna wanna pay attention.

But like I said, most high achievers never get to that. Most high achievers are are operating at about 1% of like things not working, things breaking clients not being satisfied, whatever it might be, one, 2%. Right. It's like the 99, 90 8%. Focus your energy there. Acknowledge [00:32:00] that. Show yourself some gratitude with that, because otherwise you'll end up.

Losing that sense of joy, you'll, you'll, you'll lose your joy. You'll lose your magic. You'll start to feel less confident in the work that you're doing, and more, and more and more will start to sort of hide away. And that's what I start to see in high achieving women is that you get to this point of exhaustion and burnout because you're pushing so hard to appease.

Everybody. And then when you disappoint one person, you put all of your energy there and you're like, how can I make that person happy? Or how could I have kept that person? Or how could I have done better? When in reality you're already doing exceptionally well and you're brilliant at what you do. And it's interesting because in the last month I've had conversations.

With women who I've had to literally look in [00:33:00] the eyes and say, you're exceptional at what you do. You know that right? And in that moment, I could see emotion coming through their eyes. I, I could see tears in their eyes because they're going, I, I haven't heard that from somebody in a long time. And I'm like.

Are you receiving that from people and you're just not hearing it because you're deflecting and not receptive to it, and or are you just not receiving it from your community? Which is possible. Which brings me to the whole thing about reciprocity, right? Is like give yourself recognition and validation, but also go out of your way to give others that if you feel like their work is exceptional.

And that's the thing I think that we lack. In a lot of ways, and I think high achievers aren't great at doing it because. We don't give ourselves that enough and so to like give somebody else that is like kind of a [00:34:00] vulnerable, awkward thing to do because we don't praise ourselves. And so it's really hard to praise others because we are through that like critical lens.

And if you've expanded to team, you'll realize or have probably already realized that it is so, so important to praise your team and to validate your team. And to recognize your team for the exceptional work that they do. Because they also need that in the work that they're doing within your, in your team.

So that's just something to sort of keep in mind. Anyways, I hope that this episode has given you an opportunity to pause, pat yourself on the back. I. Recognize how amazing you are, and if you haven't told yourself lately that you're proud of yourself, I highly recommend that you do, and I highly recommend that you take a moment to recognize the all of the amazingness that you are creating.

And if you do receive a negative review or critical feedback or whatever it might be, [00:35:00] that you chalk it up for what it is, and that if you're getting that once every six months or you're getting that, you know, once a year, whatever it might be. That you just chalk it up for what that is and that you don't allow that tight, narrow focus to just stay obsessed and focused on that and fixing that, that you zoom out, as I often say.

Right? I often say you're in the micro, right? You're so micro-focused on the thing that's not working. We need to zoom you out to the macro, the big picture. And so that you can see. And the minute you do that, I often will see people's bodies when I'm talking to them. All of a sudden you can just see their face relax, you see their shoulders relax, and you also see their li eyes light up.

'cause they're like, yeah, actually, what the heck am I talking about? I am doing exceptional work and I've done exceptional things and my work is life changing and it matters and it's meaningful. Why am I obsessed about this one? A [00:36:00] piece of feedback or this one comment or this whatever it is, right? And not everything needs to be fixed, and I think that's the revelation from.

The tech company, right is, and that's what I felt in my body from a reactive place, right, is that not everything needs to be fixed or dealt with right now in this moment. And it's our ability to not be reactive. Meaning when people ask for something, for example, my community ask for memory, is this something that we can actually do?

And is this something we can do quickly? Yeah, it was, it was something that we could. It could have taken six months build out potentially. Right. And those are things that you just have to kind of live with and you have to kind of go, will that be the make or break? Whether people sort of stay or whether people find value, right?

There's, if you think about the tech stacks that you work with, I mean, I work with Kajabi, right? And there's many things within Kajabi that I'm like, this seems like an easy fix. Like, why haven't, why isn't that being fixed? Or, this seems really like common sense. Why don't they have this option? [00:37:00] There's only so much people can do in a, in, in developing things, right?

There's only so many priorities we can pursue before we're stretched too thin. And I think that's something that we've gotta kind of keep in mind that there's only so much you can do and there's, and there's only so many priorities you can focus on. And that if you're jumping every time somebody asks you for something, right?

It's, it's learning how to say no more than anything or not right now. And I think that. Is another beautiful thing that you can kind of consider if you're in human design. Like what is your heck? Yes, full body. Yes. What is your, meh, maybe not right now, and what is your heck no. Because I think that's a really important thing.

But as a high achiever, go-getter, perfectionist, people, pleaser. I can do all the things. I can wear all the hats, I can juggle all the balls, right? I can get shit done and make shit happen. It's easy for us to just say yes. Yes, yes, yes. What I've learned with a tech build out more than anything is I can't say yes to [00:38:00] things.

'cause I don't, I don't know. I don't know if it's possible to do, right? And so it was like, hopefully I can do this. I'll bring this forward. And sure enough, we were able to implement it pretty quickly. But there's some tech development stuff, like certain specialists that people are requesting that might take me two months to build because of the precision behind.

The specialist, right? Like a full on quiz generator specialist that is the full suite, right? The quiz generator, the question generator, the email generator, the results page generator, I mean, those are all individual sort of specialists. It's like the full suite of the funnel. That might take me two months to build out, which is why I've only committed to one to two new specialists dropping every single month within this system because.

And that's all I can commit to because it does take time to build and it does take time to test. And I think that's the other thing that I wanna sort of preface is that most of the women I work with and the way that I [00:39:00] run my business is. High integrity. If I'm gonna put it out into the world, I need to be able to stand behind it, right?

It's not something I'm gonna build in a month. Like, oh, I just started dabbling in ai. I'm gonna build this in a month. Right? Some PE people do that, right? We've seen this in the course world, right, where all of a sudden someone takes a weekend course in marketing and now they're the expert in marketing.

Or as my mentor say, you know, and again, nothing. I, I don't wanna be critical to this, but in the same breath, I need to like shine a light on it. You know, people that are calling themselves AI specialists or experts like my mentors who have been doing this since it roll, rolled out. They're like, we don't even call ourselves experts.

Please don't call us AI experts because nobody's an expert in ai. It's so new, it's so, so new. And I think that's the distinguishing thing between. People that are, you know, the grandiose sort of claims versus like my high achievers that come to me with 20 years of experience of PhD clinical [00:40:00] experience for 20 years.

And they're like, I don't feel like I'm an expert. It's like, no, you've reached the level of mastery, right? And, but yet they're downplaying what they do. And that for me is. Again, that that clear indication of a, of a high achiever and the mentors that I have, like why I am attracted to their community and working with them was actually when they said that on a masterclass.

They said, please do not classify us as AI experts. We are not, nobody is, I mean Sam Altman, maybe from open ai, but like. Most people are not AI experts because it's so new and they can't really name themselves that. But there's lots of people out there that are now changed their IG bios to say, AI marketing expert.

And it's like, when did you actually start dabbling with this? Right? And I think that there's a humbleness to that. And when I see that in people, I'm like, oh, you're totally my people. Because my people will say to me, well, I'm not an expert, or I need to be really [00:41:00] confident that I know what I'm talking about.

And I'm like. You do have a PhD in this, in 20 years of clinical experience, I think you can start to talk about it, but there are just so much in integrity about what they claim they can and can't do. So with that, I wanted this to be a short episode, and of course here I am, 40 minutes in chatting your ear off probably, but hopefully this is held HealthView.

If you're a high achiever and you're somebody who. Maybe it's a little bit more self-critical or downplays your experience or undervalues even your own work, then I, hopefully this has been helpful and the story has, uh, resonated with you to some capacity. With that, I hope you have a Fab Week. Cheers.

Thanks for listening. We'll see you right back here next time. You can also find us on social media at creatively owned and online@creativelyowned.com. Until next time, keep showing up as your authentic [00:42:00] self.