Denise Duffield...: Hello gorgeous friend, and welcome to another episode of Chill and Prosper. I am very excited to talk to you as always, but I have to tell you something funny. Normally, I don't listen to these episodes back. Once I record them in the studio, I don't really ever see or hear them ever again, but occasionally, I'll be in my car and one of something else I'm listening to ends and then my podcast pops up and sometimes I'll listen to it. I was listening to one of them the other day and I was like, "Oh, this is really... Yeah. Good point, Denise." And then I had all my family in the car for something and it came on and they were like, "Oh," and I thought, how embarrassing. I listen to my own podcast, but no, I think it's pretty good. So yeah, share it with your friends.
Anyway, what we are talking about today is I want to share some things that I struggle with in business, even as a multimillionaire, fancy business lady, because so many times you're sitting there at home or listening to this and business can be very lonely. Business can be very isolating. We often think that we are the only ones who are struggling with mindset issues, and you're not. You're absolutely not. What I want to really emphasize by the end of this episode is that nobody is perfect in business. You don't have to be perfect in business. And the good news is that some things will be easier for you, but the bad news is that you are always going to have money mindset issues, confidence issues, visibility issues. None of that really, truly goes away. But as I always tell you, you do not need perfectionism to be successful. You don't need to be perfect to make money.
But I want to tell you some specifics of things that I still struggle with in business, because I want you to not feel alone. And some of the things I struggle with will be things that you have mastered and vice versa. So a big thing that I struggle with, ironically, because we just spoke about it, is perfectionism. I am a Virgo. I am prone to perfectionism for sure. But I think everyone's perfectionism is slightly different. And I'll tell you, for me, I grew up in a very insecure, unstable way. So I think my perfectionism can sometimes come from a feeling of wanting to be in control, wanting everything to be okay. And there's a lie that we tell ourselves when we're perfectionists is, "If I get everything perfect, then it will all be okay. If I can control everything, it'll all be okay."
So I can get very perfectionist about things and feeling like, "If everything's just in its place, then everything will be okay." And it's not. Often perfectionists are so hard on themselves. I don't feel like I've ever put anything out that I've gone, "Oh my God, that's a hundred percent perfect." Because as a perfectionist, you're always looking for those bits that aren't. Now where this impacts, it impacts my team as well. So especially my husband, Mark, who is in the business. He sometimes feels like nothing he does is ever good enough as well. Often with my team, I will kind of think, "Oh, if it's 80%, fine. I didn't have to do it myself." And my team have got very high standards, which is great, but I'm not shy in telling my husband when something isn't perfect. So he must feel like nothing he does is ever good enough too.
And sometimes with perfectionism comes this hand in hand of this feeling of, "Cool, you've done that. Onto the next thing." And so you never even celebrate and go, "Well done. That was great." Because it's always like, "Nope, onto the next thing now. Let's go." And so there's a feeling of never being content, I think, that I struggle with a little bit. You might feel the same. And let me tell you that that's probably not going to go away completely as you make more money. So you can just let yourself make money now, even though you're not perfect, even though your website's not perfect, or your course isn't perfect yet. It's better to launch something that's imperfect and help people and tweak it that way, rather than waiting for it to be perfect before you launch.
I think that's actually something I am okay at. I'm okay with launching things, but I have to accept in my mind that I'm always going to have that feeling of dissatisfaction. But you may as well have dissatisfaction with money than dissatisfaction and never have launched something. More money is always better than no money. One of the next things I struggle with is needing to be liked. I think some people think that I don't have that because I seem pretty chill and I like myself, I really try and work on my self-esteem. I get coaching, I get therapy, but I still, deep down, I still of course want people to like me. I hate when I hear that people aren't happy with something that we've done. I hate when I get haters. It doesn't feel good, of course.
I see a lot of people who don't progress in their business because they just are so worried about that first criticism, that first refund request, that they don't even get started. It is an inevitable part of business that you cannot please everybody all of the time. And that really sucks. But I just want to acknowledge that that's just a normal feeling. Of course, we want to be liked. You might be almost deliberately holding back your business because you think a bigger business means more haters or more people being unhappy with you. And that can be true just because the numbers work out that way. But I would say, for me, I have gatekeepers to help me with that because it's not healthy for me to see every little thing that someone's disgruntled about.
So the way I protect myself from that is I don't go searching for negative feedback. I don't Google myself to see who's bitching about me online. And I have seen friends do that and they get really upset and it can be very derailing because no one wants to see, I don't know. People have got criticisms about your body or your face or your accent or your voice or your whatever, they will. That's just a fact of life. But don't go out seeking for it. So I don't really read reviews. I found myself on Amazon the other day, I had to look up my book for something and sometimes I go, "Oh, I wonder where it's ranking at the moment." And then I was like, "I wonder what people are saying about the book." And I had to just note out of there because it's always just like, "I don't like that she swears," or something like that. And I go, "Oh, oh." But I'm like, but that is me and other people like it. But of course we tend to look at the negative feedback and take that way more personally than the positive stuff.
So don't go out looking for it. Don't read your unsubscribe reasons, why people unsubscribe from you. It's okay just to, not live in a bubble, but you don't have to go seeking it. And as your business gets bigger, you can have gatekeepers to go through your inbox. I have assistance in different time zones to me. So they have a first pass at everything in my social media inboxes. Because if someone's sending me a message going, "You suck." Well, I don't need to see that like, "Well, who cares? What am I supposed to do with that?" So they can go through that. They can answer any questions that need to be answered. They can do all that stuff. So when I come in, it's nice and clean kind of thing. You can have people to go through your email inbox and things like that. But I just want to acknowledge that everyone wants to be liked and sometimes that can be hard.
This next one is totally related, and it's setting boundaries. Sometimes people call me the boundary queen. My friends go, "Oh, Denise is so good with boundaries." I struggle just like anyone else with boundaries. I always recommend you go and check out my friend, Randi Buckley, Randi with an I, Buckley.she's on Instagram. She has a course, but she talks about boundaries for kind people. I remember I didn't do her course for two years because I was like, "But I'm not kind. I'm not a kind person." And I just had that underlying feeling that setting boundaries makes you a bitch. And Randi's just so good at reminding you. And recently she told me, she said to me, "Denise, you've got a kind heart." And it made me want to cry because I just thought, "No, I still feel like setting boundaries is mean and horrible." So just, I do struggle with setting boundaries as well and saying no.
Which is the next one, saying no. I struggle a lot with saying no. One, because I feel like I can do everything. Two, I'm a little bit good at a lot of things and I want to be helpful. I want to be helpful. And so you'll probably do that as well. See where you were saying yes to things you should be saying no to, or yes to things you should be saying maybe to. That's a big lesson I had to learn. I would say yes, and then I'd go, "What have I done? I actually can't do that." And I hated to go back and renegotiate or say, "Hang on," which Randi helps with as well. But saying no can be so, so hard. I had to actually have a little copy and paste to say, "Hey look, that's not my area of expertise." That hurts me even saying that. Because again, I'm a little bit good at a lot of things and I could learn if I need to, but it was just like, "Oh no good luck with that."
And then having to resist the urge to try and solve the problem for them, to go, "Oh, let me find a course for you. Let me recommend a book. Let me find something for you. Let me solve this problem even if I can't do it." And I see this at all levels of business, this inability to say no, and that can get us into so many pickles, because then we distract ourselves. We do things outside of our zone of genius. We take care of other people rather than ourselves.
Okay. Let's take a quick break because I need a little tea break and we'll come back. I've got so many more things that I struggle with in business. Hopefully, this has been helpful to you and I've got so many more to come. All right. See you after this very quick break.
Allison Jacobso...: Hi, I'm Allison Jacobson. I'm in Wilton Connecticut in the United States, and I'm a coach for women in midlife who want to get past their fears and self doubts to live a life of confidence and success. I've been reading Denise's Chill and Prosper book, and once again, as with all her other books, it's inspiring me and getting me past my money blocks so that I feel good about providing value to everybody while accepting money and getting past my money blocks. So thanks, Denise.
Beck Watts: Hi, I'm Beck Watts. I have a skincare eCommerce store and I'm from the Gold Coast, Australia. I found Denise firstly with Get Rich Lucky Bitch book. And then of course, now with Chill and Prosper. So many lessons, so many takeaways, love them both to death and really love the fact that just get it out there. Just can't sell anything if it's not there. So you can tweak and perfect later on, but just get it out there and get it out to the world and share your gift. Thanks Denise, been awesome. Bye.
Denise Duffield...: Okay. Welcome back. So these are things that I struggle with in business, even as a multimillionaire. Remember just because someone's making money doesn't mean that they're perfect and I struggle with a ton of stuff. Okay. So the next thing I struggle with is estimating time and, yes, I've written a book called Chill and Prosper. Make sure you pre-order it. Make sure you buy it. Get those bonuses. By the way, I'll tell you that URL now. It's at denisedt.com/prosper and that's where we can get all of the bonuses for my book. I just added a really cool one recently and it is affirmations for millionaire mindset. Really cool. Anyway, go do that.
But estimating time for me is really tricky. So I often layer in too much, I say yes to things and because I think I can do it all. And I really have to watch myself all the time because I just take on too much. I have completely unrealistic expectations of how long things are going to take to deliver. I know I can sit and record 50 videos in a week, but I completely underestimate how long it takes for them to then be rolled up by my team, to be edited and things like that. So I can be both for myself, but also for my team, completely unrealistic expectations. And some of that is my ADHD, which is a very common thing. We have no idea. We just manipulate time and space and just get it done.
And that can come at a really great cost. One, in the pre-worrying, even when I'm not doing it, I'm like, "How am I going to get all that done?" And then in the adrenaline rush of getting it done, which is obviously probably not good for your body. And then, the cost to that of sometimes not being able to spend as much time with my kids or not being present with my family, because I'm always thinking about that next thing. And then, there's other people involved and have to hustle and do that as well. So yeah, big, big, big thing for me is estimating time. One tip on that is sometimes I just have gatekeepers, again, in my inbox, in my social media thing. So when someone goes, "Hey, Denise, can Denise come on my thing?" My team can say, "No, sorry. She doesn't do that." Whereas if it came to me, sometimes I'll just go, "Oh yeah, I can totally do that. Why not?" Because I cloned myself somehow. Yeah. Okay.
So the next one that I struggle with might surprise you, is confidence. You might think that I'm a always confident person and that's not true. I have insecurity around my work often, "Am I saying the right thing? Am I helping enough people? Am I being original? Am I being fresh? Can I keep up?" So yeah, I totally have confidence issues still. Money doesn't make that go away completely. I think it's always going to stay with you because, I think because we care. I really care about showing up and being enough for people. And my confidence sometimes comes up and says, "No, it's not enough." So I make sure that I practice what I preach in that I do my money work. I do my tapping. I do EFT. Not every day. I'm not perfect with it, but I do my EFT. I have coaching once a month where I talk through some of my issues, my confidence issues that come up. I see a kinesiologist. I have quarterly sessions. I go to conferences and retreats and try and fill up my cup, but not in a perfect way. I'm just telling you that now.
So if you are waiting to feel confident before you get started in business, you're just going to be waiting a long time because it's one of those things that is just part of being human, I think, is that you're never going to feel 100% confident every day. Sometimes I think, "Oh yeah, I am good at what I do," but I wouldn't say that I'm there every single day. And I'm like, "Oh, I'm so good. Look at me. I'm so good." Most of the time I'm like, "Oh, I don't know. It was fine. I'm okay." But I really work on the liking myself because I think that's such a key to anything.
Okay. The other thing that I struggle with a bit is I feel overly responsible. I feel responsible for my clients. I feel responsible for my money boot campers, if you're in that group. I feel responsible for showing up all the time. I feel responsible for solving every problem of the world. I try and keep myself abreast of what's happening in the world in politics, not just in Australia, but what's happening in the UK, what's happening in the US, what's happening in Europe, what's happening around the world with natural disasters, what's happening with corruption around the world. And that can be very overwhelming because then I feel like I'm responsible for all the things. How can I help? It can very easily start to feel overwhelming if you are that person where you feel responsible for the fate of the world. For me, it manifests in sleeplessness. I can struggle to get to sleep sometimes because that period between 9:00 and 10:00 PM, 9:00 and midnight, sometimes I start to think, "How can I solve that problem?" Even if it's stuff that I can't really solve.
Yeah. So if you are someone who's got a big heart, you might really relate to that, that feeling of being responsible, overly responsible. It can make you feel paralyzed. It can make you not want to even do stuff in business. It can stop you from launching things. It can stop you from working with clients because you feel like you'll just go into those maybe codependent patterns or over delivering patterns. And that can be really hard. So remind yourself that it's okay to have boundaries. It's okay to not be responsible for everything in the world. Yeah. It's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. And I'm right there. I'm right there with you.
Now, another one that I struggle with is comparisonitis. Comparisonitis. Because I've been in the online space for quite a while. I did my first ebook in 2004, and it was called Internet Dating Tips for Men, because I was Internet dating and I felt like people sucked at it and I just wanted to help. So I've been around the online space for quite a while. I do find myself comparing sometimes with people who have either had a big viral thing happen or they've felt like they've come out of nowhere or they're saying things in a fresh way, or they've got fresh batteries sometimes. And this happened a lot, especially when I was having kids. I remember in those early couple of days after you have a baby and I was sitting there breastfeeding, and I was just like, "Everyone's in Paris having these beautiful photo shoots." And then I was like, "Everyone's doing this. Everyone's in the Maldives." And it really just made me feel like a real loser. And this was, I was well in the multimillion dollar business by then, but I still felt like I had compare myself to others.
I think that can really stop people even at the start of their business because they think, "Well, they're doing it better," or "They're dominating that space. So I can't talk about it." This even goes out for anyone who talks about money and money mindset, you might think, "Well, I can't do it because Denise is doing it." Well, find your niche for it too. Find your spin on it, find your uniqueness. I'll give this as an example too, for babies, people who are helping new moms as a business, there's always new moms. There's always new parents. There are always people who are struggling with that baby stage, but there's so many nuances that you can go into that. It's like, well support for new parents with ADHD, support new parents with chronic illness, support for new parents during the pandemic. There's always something that's topical and new and fresh, but it has to come from you.
That does help me sometimes to go, "Hey, nobody can say it like I can, just stay in your lane." Sometimes though you have to protect yourself from that as in don't go looking. I did that recently. I went and looked at someone's money mindset program. And I was like, "I can see where they've got some of those ideas from." And it made me feel crap because I was like, "Oh, okay." But I was like, "Fine. They can do it in their own way. That's fine. I don't own that topic." But I just acknowledge that comparisonitis can be very paralyzing and it can feel sucky because you always feel less than.
And then the last thing that I struggle with, which you might again go, "What?" is money mindset and money blocks. And you go, "What, Denise? You teach that." And it's like, yeah, I teach it because I understand. I understand the struggle of it. And you will not ever get to a place where you go. "Ah, I'm perfect. Everything's wonderful." Because there's always something new to learn about money. There's always something that you can uncover about yourself, about money. And so the numbers might be different, but the feeling is the same. The feeling is the same.
And this is, if you are in my money bootcamp, you'll know this. We talk about the same things over and over again because we are different, our business is different, and we see things in a slightly different way. I do as well. I always have to go back to those lessons of, "Well, I've earned all I can now. It's not allowed to be too easy. Oh, I'm not allowed to earn more money just by doing something I love." And that's the same lesson again and again, that you're going to have to learn. It's the same thing that I had to deal with at the start of my business when I was charging $70 for a session. So it's an ongoing process. It really is an ongoing process.
So some of these that you heard me say today in this podcast episode, you're like, "Oh, I had those too. I thought Denise was a bit fancier than that and perfect." And I'm not. I'm not. I'm just like you and money is money. Money's not going to make you perfect ever, ever, ever, but it's totally safe for you to make money even if you struggle with mindset issues, like me.
So hopefully that helps. If you are new to my work, make sure that you come over and get on my newsletter list. It's at denisedt.com/newsletter because I send out, a couple of times a week, I send out mindset lessons and I'm never telling you that I'm perfect. I'm sharing this stuff because we are learning together. Okay. So make sure you're on my newsletter, denisedt.com/newsletter to make sure that you're working on your money mindset and immersing yourself in this world because I've got a ton of resources to help you on it. Okay. My friend, one final break so I can have a little tea and I'll be right back with my final thought for today. Bye.
Elena: Hi, I'm Elena and I live in Manchester in the UK. I've been setting up an advanced writer's program for young writers who need more than the national curriculum can offer all of them. It has been such a terrifying process at times, but Denise's words of wisdom in her podcast and in her books has kept me going time after time. Get Rich Lucky Bitch and Chill and Prosper have transformed my ideas about putting myself out there and about the economic space that I take up in the world.
My word at the moment that I am relying on is the word, pivot. I used to think of this just in association with Ross and friends and the sofa incident. But now I'm thinking about it in terms of my business. The word pivot has given me the permission to change my mind, to restart when I've needed to, to be flexible, and it's helped me not to give up and I think counter setbacks or failure. So thank you, Denise. So many words of wisdom, but pivot is the one that is keeping me going right now. I hope everybody goes out and buys these books straight away and get ready to have your life turned on its head in the best possible way.
Denise Duffield...: Okay. Thank you for listening today. Please, again, rate it on wherever you listen to it. It really helps. I would love to see Chill and Prosper go up the charts. Why not? But my final thought for today is, again, about that perfectionism, feeling like everyone else has got it together and you don't. So this is a quote from a lady called April Bryan and it say, "Perfectionism is a delusion that can rob one of a very successful, enriching life, if not careful." And isn't that just, wow, isn't that perfect? Perfect. "Perfectionism is a delusion that can rob one of a very successful, enriching life, if not careful," from April Bryan. So go forth and be imperfect today. You're allowed to make money, even if you're imperfect. It's safe for you to be imperfect and make money. All right, beautiful. I will see you next week on another episode of Chill and Prosper. Go forth and prosper and I'll see you then. Bye.