Entrepreneurial Anxiety

Our guest’s name today is Lianne Kim, she is a business coach for mama entrepreneurs, she helps them build successful and profitable businesses so they can live their wildest dreams.

Lianne has had her business for almost 8 years now, and it was started by accident.

Basically, she had a side hustle at the time and posted in a local mom’s Facebook group asking if anyone in it had a business and wanted to get together for a glass of wine.

And it exploded from there, so Lianne started with in person events and migrated online because her kids were growing up.

What is entrepreneurial anxiety?

At the beginning of Lianne’s business, she felt really excited and joyful everyday, like she was running on adrenaline because she loved what she did.

All of these challenges started popping up and feelings of imposter syndrome, mom guilt, and vulnerability of putting yourself out there.

You’re experiencing the highs and lows every day, but because you’re so excited to be doing what you love, you end up just shoving those negative emotions to the side and keep pushing on.

But what Lianne found through her coaching work is that a lot of us get to this point where the business shifts and all of a sudden it’s not as enjoyable.

Signals that we might be starting to move into this phase are things like realizing that you’re drained at the end of the day instead of energized.

When we wake up in the morning we have that running to-do list that feels like it’s getting longer and longer.

We start to feel anxious about starting our day opposed to feeling really excited to start the day.

And it’s something all of us go through but particularly mom entrepreneurs because they’re up against a different set of challenges.

Mom guilt is a real thing, when they wake up they’ve got two lists, business and then the mom/partner/household manager.

The two things are constantly competing and that anxiety over time starts to build and build.

It’s an anxiety that Lianne would say the average mom who isn’t self employed, doesn’t have.

What do you believe is the reason we’re seeing more anxiety in entrepreneurs than in the past?

When Lianne thinks about when her mom was raising them in the late seventies and eighties, it wasn’t possible for her to just start a business from her computer at home.

She either had a full-time, part-time, or no job at all and those were just the options she had to work with.

So it’s great that as women in this day and age have all of these different options of ways to earn a living.

What’s coming with that is so many new people entering this arena, there’s more people doing it and we have been stuck at home for the past two years.

Lianne thinks that isolation is already a problem for mom’s, they already feel like everything is on their shoulders and not a lot of people understand but to add to that this layer of being self-employed.

How are you seeing anxiety manifest in entrepreneurs?

It manifests as a lot of things, it actually disguises itself as a lot of things, overwhelm being a big one.

A lot of the women that Lianne serves will tell her that they get stuck in overwhelm and that analysis paralysis.

“There’s so many things I need to do, could do, should do. And I don’t know where to start or I would have picked something but I don’t know if that’s the right thing”

It also shows up online, a lot of Lianne’s women know that in order to grow their brand, they need to be more visible, they need to be showing their face.

Doing things like stories, reels, but that doesn’t come naturally to most of us.

So when the anxiety hits, we just want to pull the covers over our head and stay in bed.

We don’t see the growth that we know we need, we don’t see the leads coming in, that’s the sort of manifestation of it.

What are some strategies to overcome entrepreneurial anxiety?

The first and most important is to surround yourself with people who get what you’re going through and that’s why Lianne’s community mama’s and co exists.

She knows that she felt really lonely when she was first starting her side hustle, she didn’t have a lot of people that she could talk to about some of the bigger things.

When we’re an entrepreneur, we are playing a bigger game so you have to find people who are doing those same things, who are riding the highs and lows just like you are.

While Lianne is not a fan of venting and dumping on people, she appreciates that there are sometimes times where you just need to get it out.

And then when you’re in that more positive place, you feel supported by others and you can start looking for some of those solutions.

Lianne goes for 20-30 minute walks every single morning without fail, it’s how she starts her day, so nourishing yourself and your body.

Hydrating yourself, having the things in your life that you know are supportive is something extremely crucial.

Tell me about your book Joyful Business.

The book Joyful Business is really a blueprint for people who want to have more joy in their business, and that doesn’t mean just messing around all day and not making any money.

It’s actually quite the opposite, a joyful business is a lucrative and profitable business because you’re prioritizing the right things, but it just doesn’t feel like a hustle and a grind to make that revenue.

We’ve had thousands of women read the book and tell us that their lives have changed as a result of that .

Even if you’re not at the beginning of your business journey, if you want to experience more flow, joy, freedom, and financial freedom, this book is absolutely going to help.

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