Breaking the Founder Ceiling: Limiting Beliefs That Block Entrepreneurs From Success

Andrea McTague: Welcome back to The Shift Show. I'm your host Andrea McTague. I'm a registered psychologist and founder of ShiftGrit Counseling and Psychology Services. We today are going to be diving into the psychological barriers that quietly hold entrepreneurs, founders, and business owners back. Entrepreneurship can be an exhilarating, terrifying, meaningful, and destabilizing experience all at once. But beneath the stress and the uncertainty, the constant decision-making, Many founders are actually being guided by something deeper, some childhood limiting beliefs that continue to shape their confidence, their leadership, risk tolerance, and all of those pieces that go into running a business, growing a business, and all of those things. Joining me today is Claire Goddard, and she is a registered provisional psychologist at ShiftGrit. So she's one of our excellent brain benders. And before becoming a therapist, Claire spent 15 years running a computer numerical control, CNC, machine shop in Alberta with her husband. And they launched their own product line of angled stirrup irons for the English horseback riding industry. So a little bit of production there. And they've experienced navigating the pandemic, supply chain disruptions, oil and gas volatility, and the constant uncertainty that so many business owners face, not to mention burnout. She brings both lived experience and deep clinical knowledge into her work with founders and high performing professionals and business owners, amongst other people. And so today we're going to be breaking down some of the most common limiting beliefs that block entrepreneurs from success and talk a little bit about how those beliefs create predictable patterns and self-sabotaging behavior and what can actually help founders build emotional resilience, confidence and clarity using our core method and some other stuff. So before we begin, a reminder that this episode is for education purposes only, and it's not a replacement for professional therapy or business advice. And if you need some of that, you can reach out to ShiftGrit or another licensed professional. Claire, let's start with you a little bit. So what made you want to explore the connection between limiting beliefs and entrepreneurial success? What was your initial experience like? How did you, with the machine shop and all that? Talk to me a little bit about it. How did you come into this interest area?

Claire: Well, I think it combines my two passions, psychology, and also entrepreneurship, being a business owner. So I've wanted to be a psychologist for a very long time, and took a long journey. It was a winding journey to get here, but well worth it. And while I was working towards, you know, doing all the, I have a bachelor's degree in a different area. So while I was doing all my upgrading and undergraduate courses and going into my master's degree to be a psychologist, I was also working with my husband in the machine shop and And then once I became a psychologist, I looked at my journey as an entrepreneur. And I had really looked at a lot of the exciting opportunities that I had and some of the strengths that I've gained and some of the really, really big challenges. And I really appreciated the link between mental health and the struggles that face entrepreneurs. And so I've really dedicated a good part of my practice to helping those entrepreneurs discover their limiting beliefs and working towards eliminating them so that they can live their best life as a founder and entrepreneur.

Andrea McTague: Nice. And we have some convergence in our clinical population because my specialty is high-net-worth individuals and founders and entrepreneurs, right? And they're often at the end of their life cycle of business ownership. So moving out of it a little bit, but sometimes like, you know, right in the thick of it. So we'll have some good stuff and some stories. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of those challenges that you and your husband faced? What were some of the difficult periods or the like?

Claire: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: Oh my god, anxiety inducing things that came up for you in the past with your businesses, whether it's on the supply and product side or on the machine shop side.

Claire: Yeah, absolutely. So we purchased the machine shop from a previous owner, who my husband Craig was a business or a colleague of. And he really helped us because we didn't have the capital to, you know, get up and running very quickly. So he helped us sort of by financing it and letting us pay the the purchase in installments. once we finished paying him, yeah, absolutely. And once we finished paying him and we owned the business outright, we went ahead and upgraded our equipment, bless you, which involved purchasing a lot of new machines and their

Andrea McTague: Is that kind of like an owner financing kind of seller financing model? Nice, nice.

Claire: large, large machines and very, very capital intense. we did some leases and then we kind of build our clientele. So we took over his previous clientele as well as building our own. And for the first five years, it was extremely successful and it was awesome.

Andrea McTague: Which is amazing because it's usually in those first years where you've got this capital, capex investment and then you're like, okay, well, we've got the stuff to make the things, but now where do we find the people to make them for and all of that sort of thing. So you guys had a good journey in the five years.

Claire: Exactly. In fact, was a little bit, it was a little bit more challenging that way, actually, because, know, once you're doing well, you come to expect it will stay that way. And then all of a sudden, when a challenge hits, it's like, my goodness, what do we do? You know, so we had to learn the hard way what a lot of people learn at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey. So it was a little bit more challenging for us. And I have to admit that I was kind of used to the success of it.

Andrea McTague: Yes. I had a similar experience with Shift actually where the like out the gate, we're just like, off to the races. And then we scaled a bit too fast. And then realized like later on some of those challenges again, that, you know, probably certain people face early on and you're a bit spoiled. And then it's like a big learning curve. What happened in the after that five years?

Claire: Yeah. Well, the oil and gas market fell just before the new liberal government came in. And then with the liberal policies that came in restricting oil and gas and the tanker ban and all of that, business investment in Alberta just significantly dropped. Now we learned very quickly back in, I think, 2012, 2013, to that there were some early signs that sort of let us know that it would be important to diversify markets. So we made sure that we had a very diverse amount of industries. So we weren't completely dependent on oil and gas. But of course, in Alberta, everything is really tied to oil and gas, secondary markets. So business investment just dried up. A lot of the companies, you know, moved out of the province. A lot of projects just got cancelled or pushed back. And all of a sudden we came to the point where it's like, God, it's not as easy anymore, you know, to.

Andrea McTague: What was your own experience then psychologically or from like a mind perspective at that point? Like what were the feelings that were coming up for you guys at that time?

Claire: So before COVID hit, it was sort of slowly, gradually going down. So we had time to kind of, you know, we were optimistic. We thought, okay, we're going to be scrappy. We're going to, you know, be proactive and do a lot of business development and, you know, find different markets, do a lot of marketing, that kind of thing. And that certainly worked. when COVID hit and the whole world shut down, that became the biggest challenge because all of a sudden we went from, you know, making not only meeting our, you know, operational obligations, our costs, but actually exceeding. So we were still making a little bit of profit at that point. And then when COVID hit, it was like, my God, our business you know, per month, our revenue went half. And all of a sudden, we were really struggling. And we didn't qualify for a lot of the subsidies because at that time, the government had put in all of these really tough restrictions. Like you had to make, you had to prove that your revenue had decreased by 75%. And that was just.

Andrea McTague: So you guys were just at that threshold, but you're like, but I still have the staff and everything and all of the capex that I got to pay for. So I'm guessing like lots of feelings of like helplessness and like not being in control, which we see really commonly with entrepreneurs, right? Especially because it might be the internal things, but there's also these external things like a pandemic that can just throw giant wrenches into the most perfect of plans. And then, then what was kind of the arc after that? the pandemic COVID happens.

Claire: Yes. Yes.

Andrea McTague: feeling kind of powerless and then what occurred?

Claire: So then supply chain issues became a problem. Like all of a sudden, you know, with the Suez Canal episode and a lot of things, it was hard to get materials for the jobs that we're doing. We do a lot of steel and aluminum. And it was really hard to find, to source materials. At that time, we were still pretty optimistic. So we're like, okay, all of a sudden, really oil and gas now. companies are no longer doing production work, they're maybe doing some small little runs. So we're still optimistic, still okay, we're gonna build our own product line now. So we, you know, we're passionate about the show jumping industry, our daughter had been a show jumper for 10 years. So it was a market we knew well. And at the time, Europe were doing, they were doing some pretty interesting things where they had created an angled stirrup iron. So it was angled at a position where your foot could be in the stirrup and be very solid and comfortable. And it would reduce a lot of injuries from riders who were being in this very uncomfortable, unnatural position.

Andrea McTague: So you kind of saw a problem in the market and you're like, okay, we'll go to productivity, kind of utilize the space that we've got in our shop a little bit better. And so then you launch that product and then what were kind of the challenges that you faced both like personally and mentally and with that product launch.

Claire: So one of the limiting beliefs that came up for me was, that I discovered was, I'm not, I felt incapable. I felt like, you know what, I'm not prepared for this. not, I knew what I was doing. I was very confident because I knew the show jumping industry very, very well. So I was very confident there, but.

Andrea McTague: the

Claire: when but the pandemic hit and all of a sudden all the shows were canceled, the barns were closed, you couldn't do trade shows, you couldn't talk to your customer anymore. so and because we didn't have a lot of capital to keep going, we had to put that to sleep. And we had just started building that. So we were getting momentum and sales. And then we had to put that aside so that we could focus on our machine shop.

Andrea McTague: Hmm So wildly frustrating.

Claire: Very, very frustrating. then when we were okay, we are ready now to resume our stirrup business. At that time, the European brands that were very well known had saturated the North American market. So we thought at the time when we built this, that we were the only ones really it hadn't it hadn't penetrated the North American market. So it was ours to control.

Andrea McTague: So I'm hearing like a lot of having to be responsive and reactive to a lot of external factors that are happening, which I think is one of the things that makes entrepreneurship in general so psychologically intense is that there's so many pivots and humans in general are not wonderful with change management. We don't like to change sometimes like cognitively. We understand it's a good idea. Like, okay, there's like low production. We should make our own thing.

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: and you go in one path, but then it's almost like the world's pushing on you again. So having to be, having to do multiple pivots in a small amount of time, it sounds like. And then you mentioned something else about optimism. And we see that optimism as being, like think it's something that if you're going to open a business, you almost have to have like a delusional level of optimism that everything will be fine. Everything will be good because I think you would just drown otherwise. But sometimes we see that waiver a little bit.

Claire: Exactly. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: Right? And it could be a certain time of day and it could waver a lot or for a long time, which is another thing where it's kind of like an emotional roller coaster that you're on. Would you kind of agree with that?

Claire: Absolutely. mean, one of the things being an entrepreneur, a founder is extremely exciting. And one of the benefits of being your own, you know, having your own business is building your own, your own baby, basically. And, and it's, it's incredible. It's a journey that takes you on this self discovery in a growth way. So, you know, you learn so much about yourself, you learn how far you can go, how much you can do, how expansive you can be and how much you can accomplish. I liken it to being mountain climbing, right? And then there are spots where you're on the mountain and you're exhausted and your hands are burning and your arms are just exhausted and you

Andrea McTague: Yes, yes, yes, I would agree.

Claire: don't know if you can do it anymore. And you've got to reach that next little shelf and can I do it, can I do it? And then you do and you grab onto it and then you get to the top of that mountain that you're climbing and you look around and you're like, my God, I did it.

Andrea McTague: Well, and I think this is one of the reasons that I work with the client population that I work with so much is because when you are owning a business, scaling a business, founding a business, whatever, you have to push on the evolution of self in order to get to the next level because it's almost like, and I remember one of my mentors saying to me, he's like, it's like you're going to rebuild the business completely at each level that you go up. It's like you're playing a completely different game, almost like a video game where there's different skills required.

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: and you need to be a different person at each part. So the founder in like year one to two, totally different than when you are scaling it, putting in systems, that's a completely different person. When you're managing a staff of say two people versus like we are managing a staff that's heading up to 50 people, it's a completely different skillset to build the culture and so on and so on. And I think that that acquisition of skills internally in order to launch the strategies and skills externally is a constant journey for most entrepreneurs. Or sometimes they get stuck in that journey where maybe they're having difficulty with the radical candor conversations or moving from charismatic leadership to more of a systematic scaled leadership. Maybe they're having difficulty with

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: delegation, which we see, you I could just talk to everybody and tell them what to do, but now there's like 40 of them. So how do I do that? Right. So there's so many interesting challenges. And I think that's one of the reasons it's such an intense thing, both on the good side for what you're saying, the accomplishment and the resilience factors that it can build, but also, you know, on the other side. And I think that that's why the application of a therapeutic model like ours, which is really focused on

Claire: Thanks.

Andrea McTague: getting rid of the limiting beliefs that serve as blocks personally, so that people can move out of their kind of like threat brain back into their cognitive mind, where they're able to then acquire and launch strategies is so incredibly powerful. I know my entrepreneurs benefit from it a lot. But sometimes we don't know that that exists. So let's get into talking a little bit about what makes founders so vulnerable to like

Claire: absolute.

Andrea McTague: fear and shame and self-doubt and over-responsibility and all of these things. What do you think it is?

Claire: I think it's incredible that, you know, these limiting beliefs that we have really cause havoc in our lives. And like you said, we, a lot of times we don't even realize that we're operating from these limiting beliefs. And so, you know, they really can create, they can block our ability to, to pivot or to handle challenges or to change in some way.

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm.

Claire: and grow with the business because we're still stuck in this limiting belief mindset.

Andrea McTague: yeah, 100%. Like I can give you one of mine early on was I had the I'm irresponsible limiting belief, which is super, super common for business owners because the dysfunctional need involved in that one is I need to be responsible for everything and everyone, which is kind of one of the reasons people tend to have the delulu idea of I'm just going to open my own thing then, right? But what that ends up doing later on,

Claire: Thank Thanks.

Andrea McTague: is it's a great landscape for burnout creation because you take more and more and more on because you feel like you should. And you also take on some of the emotional effects or maybe if an employee is not doing well, you work a little bit harder than them or you take on it as like your fault that, well, I should have led this way or train this way or whatever. So it can have issues with the development of bounding as well and making that distinction of like, what are you actually responsible for? Like payroll. or and what are you not actually responsible for, which might be, you know, a staff's bad attitude, for example. So we're seeing things like that. I think that was one of my experiences. What was one of your early, you mentioned that I'm incapable one coming up. What that look like for you?

Claire: Yeah. So I'm incapable, it sort of came about, I think from, because, you know, at ShiftGrit, we understand that our limiting beliefs come from these non-nurturing elements in our childhood, right? That, you know, our parents do the best that they can with the information that they have. you know, our parents, by and large, are really trying to do the best for us.

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Thank

Claire: But my parents, you know, had a tendency to, you know, be a little bit protective of me when I was a child and sort of want the best for me. So sometimes, you know, they would sort of do things for me or, you know, not encourage me to go out on a limb and really take risks and stuff. So that kind of led to the limiting belief I'm incapable. And so how that sort of worked in my business is being afraid to just put something out in the world, it kind of had to be perfect. And that is a bit of a challenge when you're entering a market, all business, when you're an entrepreneur, it's very fast, the marketplace is super fast.

Andrea McTague: Well, and you're not good at the things because you like are good at the one thing and then you got to do all these other things. You're like, what do you mean? What? I got to learn how to read a PNL and stuff like that. Like, I don't know anything about that. You're basically like constantly in realms where you don't know the thing. And if you have something like I'm incapable or I'm not good enough, which has the dysfunctional need of I need to be perfect. Well, I will see my founders. They'll try to be perfect at the thing before they try the thing. And you have to do something and approximate the skill before you can actually have a skill.

Claire: Yes. It's fine.

Andrea McTague: When we think about like, I don't know, my first yoga classes, like that was interesting. Just can't do it. But you have to kind of suck before you can get to the point where you're good. But that can serve as a block to trying or even taking on risk, it sounds like a little bit. And then the other thing.

Claire: Okay. That's right. Yes. And being willing to put something out to your first iteration, or not first iteration, but your first real market ready version out into the marketplace quick enough that the competition doesn't get there before you. So as a perfectionist, or I need to perform perfectly, you tend to wait until it's perfect before you go out in the marketplace.

Andrea McTague: Yes, it's like urgency.

Claire: And that's what happened to us. We kind of missed the boat, right? Because, you know, we had to shut down while we worked on our other business. And then all of a sudden the competition entered the marketplace. you have to, yeah, you have to be willing to forget perfectionism, knowing that you can put out a second version, a third version, an improved version. So it doesn't always have to be absolutely market.

Andrea McTague: as opportunity cost.

Claire: 100 % market ready, it can be like 98 % market ready.

Andrea McTague: Jane, I would like to read business biographies. James Dyson is like one of my favorites. And I think for his vacuum, must, it was like thousands and thousands of iterations. And he was just like, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do this. It's gonna be great eventually. So I think that there's like that tenacity that's required, but then also balancing it with making sure that it's not just due to perfectionism that's in some limiting belief landscape that's not real. And this is why I think it's so important for founders. or business owners to be very aware of what their limiting beliefs are because it can have very costly errors and outcomes and make things a lot more difficult, right? When you say like the urgency is reduced or the timing is put off or whatnot, not just in bringing things to market at a certain speed, but even in dealing with people, right? There's a lot with that, right? So think that that's one of the areas. And in general, I think that imposter syndrome.

Claire: Mm-hmm.

Andrea McTague: right, because you're doing things that you haven't done. So that's something that I hear really, really commonly from my business owners. And that is those, the imposter syndrome definitely involves things like I'm incapable, I'm not good enough, I'm a failure. And that bit of that shame structure of like, I don't think anybody knows that I don't actually know what the hell I'm doing here.

Claire: That's right, exactly. know, they're gonna, I'm gonna be found out. You know, eventually someone's gonna find out that I'm not who I think I am. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: Yep. Yes. Yeah, she's just faking this thing. She doesn't actually know what the hell she's talking about. So talk to me a little bit about how our early experiences shape business owners like our tolerance for risk and failure or drive for success and all of that kind of stuff. Like what do the early childhood experiences have to do with like how we are operating as business owners now?

Claire: Right. So I think a lot of our childhood really sets us up for, you know, very positive experiences and setting us up for that drive that is required for being a business owner and a lot of the independence thinking and, you know, a lot of the creativity. you know, for example, I always see that there are parts of our less than optimal experiences as children that really can help us, right? So parents with very high expectations or unrelenting standards is in of itself not always a positive thing because it can set up these limiting beliefs of I'm not perfect or I'm not good enough or I'm incapable, but there are also really good elements it teaches you how to.

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Claire: how how to strive, how to continue, how to persist and be, you know, how to hustle and, you know, not give up and all of that, which you need as a business owner. But there's, so there's that, but then there's always the challenges, always those little, you know, because as children, we don't yet have the capacity to understand another person's perspective. We see it through our own

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm.

Claire: egocentric child eyes. So we'll interpret, you know, we sometimes interpret, you know, you have to use 90 % isn't good enough, you need 100 % as not necessarily the parents teaching us how to strive for more, but it could also turn us into well, I'm never going to be good enough. So it ends up giving us these, these limiting beliefs of I'm not good enough. which then ends up being a barrier later on when we need to keep going and work hard and let something that may not be 100 % perfect out into the marketplace.

Andrea McTague: Well, and I think that's one of the things I see often is that the initial things like video game stage of one, the initial limiting beliefs. So that like need for perfection, need for striving, need to protect oneself, need to take on responsibility, all of those like great launch pads for the initial stages of entrepreneurship. But then there seems to be a troche that happens later where they actually get in the way because now it's like. okay, well, I can't do the balance. I don't know how to stop striving when it's beyond my capacity. So let me get some burnout stuff or the over responsibility where I'm actually taking away the opportunity for other people to have ownership and then develop their skill set and run with things. So for example, so I think that there's pieces like that where you're like, okay, well, part of this is good. And one of the things related to that is something that my entrepreneurs say to me often because they're aware that it has a role like these limiting beliefs have a role in actually creating success initially often and so then they get very paranoid they're like well if you go pull those out of my head which is what I do what you do what we do here if you go pull those out of that my head then will I lose my drive will I lose my ambition will I not be able to do that and my answer to them is always yeah we're just gonna move it we're gonna move it from the threat brain drive which is like they're basically your nervous systems. Like there's threats, there's tigers gonna eat us, we gotta run, run, run, run, run. And it's compulsive and it's global and it moves it into our cognitive mind, which actually then is able to still have that drive by access, like the more strategic thinking, which is gonna give you your long term because entrepreneurship's like definitely more of a marathon scenario than a sprint. And then that way it takes us out of having that like sprint, burnout, fall, crash. Sprint, crash, sprint, crash, which actually ends up being very costly often, both on company cultures and also on revenue and orientation to achieving a goal. And then we kind of get them into like more consistency because they're able to hold it there just because we're not having this dysregulation so much. Do you see that in your clients and in your business experience as well?

Claire: Absolutely, absolutely. I totally agree. My clients who, know, they, they always look to the positive aspects of the, you know, of that, the, the striving and the, the ability to keep going. And I always say that, again, neutralizing those limiting beliefs, getting rid of them, and allows the, the client to then start to make choices, deliberate choices from their cognitive mind, instead of reacting emotionally to what's going on because they're limiting belief and because of the threat from the, you know, that somehow the, you know, we call it the walnut brain, but the emotional or subconscious mind tends to react. Instead, we're allowing them to start looking, thinking from their cognitive mind.

Andrea McTague: Okay.

Claire: and that gives them choices and then they can say, well, yeah, I actually do want to continue doing it this way. Or you know what, this isn't healthy for me, I'm gonna change, I'm gonna move over and play with it a bit.

Andrea McTague: One of the things I see quite frequently with my clients is when we move them from the walnut brain. So basically the limiting beliefs function as something that's going to, if they're activated, it's gonna bin something as a threat or not a threat. And when it gets binned as a threat, then we switch into the walnut mind, which is a lot more reactionary, a lot in the moment, doesn't do time, so it's very short term, a little bit more impulsive. When we get them out of that, so we kill the limiting belief so that they stay in their cognitive mind, what we see is they get pulled into the business a little bit less. So they're less reactionary, which gives them that zoomed out perspective where they can actually look at the underlying problem. So it's the underlying problem actually that we have like a hiring problem and we're not evaluating our staff fit for the organization. And then alternately for the walnuts in charge, it's just dealing with these like staffing issues that keep coming up. And then we'll continue to keep coming up until that underlying problem is solved. So they get a lot more efficient about perceiving the actual problem and then being able to fix it. Because these are very ambitious, smart individuals, deployed by the wrong brain, ambition can be quite destructive and occupy a lot of mental real estate, I think.

Claire: Absolutely. And one of the things that can happen is when you do go through your challenges, because all entrepreneurs will hit challenges, you're going to fail a lot more than you're going to succeed, just the law of averages being a business owner, you're going to run into cashflow issues, you're going to run into a whole bunch of challenges. And if you are operating from your limiting beliefs, and you're reacting in an emotional way, it's going to it's going to color or it's going to cover the facts. You're going to sort of see things from a skewed, distorted perspective. And that's what happened to me. We, you know, had a very, very challenging year where it was awful. It was the worst year of my life. And I wasn't able to see anything. I couldn't see how we were going to get out of it.

Andrea McTague: Yes, yes distortions

Claire: I could not see because I was in so much fear of I'm going to lose everything. I'm I'm I don't deserve this was my operating limiting belief at that point. I don't deserve it. It's going to fall away. The shoes going to drop. It's going to come out of the sky and hit me in the head and I'm going to lose everything I have.

Andrea McTague: which takes you totally out of your problem solving brain.

Claire: Yeah, exactly. And it makes you not want to get out of bed. And the first thing, the most important thing as an entrepreneur when you're facing struggles is you have to fight, you have to fight. Exactly. And so again, that, you know, the, talk about in shift grit, talk about, you know, the, sorry, the limiting belief. And then we talk about in order to avoid the pain of that limiting belief.

Andrea McTague: Get in it. Don't avoid. Yep.

Claire: we automatically come up with a dysfunctional need. And so my dysfunctional need to respond to the belief I'm incapable was to avoid. And so I would avoid the financials. I would avoid.

Andrea McTague: So your op-ed was just like avoidance. You're like, I'm not gonna look at that statement. I'm just gonna do this other thing that has nothing to do with the priority structure, all of that.

Claire: So, And I became wishing it's all going to be fine, you know.

Andrea McTague: Yes, so this is the abdication thing. You're like, well, it'll get itself sorted out, which of course, it doesn't, right? Yes, yes. And then it's like that.

Claire: It doesn't, it makes it worse, right? So by limiting that limiting belief, are then able to, instead of reacting emotionally, binned by that threat, we can then, okay, I'm not comfortable. I don't understand finances. It's not my key, but I have to in order to make my business survive and thrive. I need to get over it and deal with it. And.

Andrea McTague: Well, 100%. Then you kind of remove that, because I think another one that's really common for entrepreneurs, especially when the business is not going well, is that I'm shameful, right? So the dysfunctional link for I'm shameful is I need to hide or I need to mask, which then gets in the way of people accessing resources, like going and talking to somebody. You talk to your accountant, talk to your other business friends, whatever, where you can be like, this is happening and it's terrible. Like, what can I do? What are some options? What have you done? That kind of thing where we are seeking information. But all of that stuff is strategic, which means it belongs to the cognitive. So that down regulating of the nervous system is super, super important to get into that. So we've got this tie from the non-nurturing elements, which are essentially where our limiting beliefs are encoded. And we said, like, it can be really, really great and motivating in certain areas. Or it can put us into this fear-based reality, which then ends up creating those blocks to, you were saying, like, to motivation or these avoidance kinds of things. Talk to me a little bit also about the other side. So sometimes the business is going really, really well at scaling. And we see that the founder's identity or the business owner's identity becomes really tied to the business or the self-worth becomes really tied to the outcomes. Talk to me a little bit about what you see there in terms of limiting the leaf landscaper. What does that look like for people?

Claire: Yes. I think my a lot of my clients fall into this trap actually when when it does become successful because there's a little bit of a tendency to you know, sort of Yeah, because it's your baby and because you put so much into it, you put everything you have into it, it becomes it becomes a part of you. It becomes your obsession.

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Claire: And you, and not everybody, but many, many, many business owners end up getting to the point where they are so invested that the rest of their life kind of falls apart. And I think, yeah. And I think that's where a lot of divorces happen. One of my clients had put so much of his life into his business.

Andrea McTague: Yep, we see that constantly.

Claire: And then when he had moved on, all of a sudden he was like, I feel alone.

Andrea McTague: What's... And because my particular client are often transitioning out of their business or they're little older, they're looking at setting up a succession plan, et cetera, and they will logically start to do this stuff and then they balk and then they can't let go of it. can't leave or when they do, they do a sale. So there's a bunch of money in the bank account, et cetera, buy all accounts on paper, it's super successful, but they get really, really, really depressed or really, really, really anxious.

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: because we are usually seeing stuff like, I'm worthless, so I need to provide value, but now I've lost the vehicle in which I provide value, or we see I'm irrelevant and I need to be relevant. So this is the guy that walked in and he's the big boss there, he's the whatever, and now he goes home and his kids are doing their own thing and wife's out at the tennis game or whatever, and he loses that relevance structure. So we see lots of activations with that. And I think that that's one of the, and often that comes from them putting off the development of any sort of stuff outside their business life. creating a diversity, just like a stock portfolio, creating a diversification of their life. You know, like, do we have friends? Do we have things that we like to do? Are we interested in other things? Or is it just this pure obsession? Which I do think to some degree is necessary if you're going to do something exceptional in the realm of business.

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: There's a bit of an obsessional piece in there, but being aware of that and then pulling the blocks to that out and then putting different things in where it's like, okay, yes, there's an obsessional piece, but maybe we can still maintain some friendships or maybe we can maintain like some other activities or get into some succession planning because of course it won't last forever. And I think that's a very disturbing thought for most business owners who've tied it to their identity a lot.

Claire: Yeah, and the research supports that. mean, there's a lot of research out there that supports that, you know, when people, particularly business owners are very, very high performing CEOs. When they leave when they retire, many of them end up having very short lives. They've spent so much time, you know, focused on their work, they've neglected a lot of them have neglected their health now. you know, we're learning from that. So there are a lot of people who are actually paying more attention to their health. But, you know, and you neglect a lot of everything, and then all of a sudden you retire, for example, or you sell the business, and it's like, what's my purpose?

Andrea McTague: Well, and think this goes in and goes into beyond even business owners. It's like any professional or anybody who's had a career of any variety and that's been the dominant thing, it can very easily underserve the rest of your life. And then all of a sudden we don't plan for what that next stage is. And with no plan, it often doesn't go super, super. well, right? So we're always looking at creating incrementalism. And the other thing I think that I push on a lot with my business owners, particularly as we start to talk about, okay, what's next, right? Which might be early on, they might not be, you know, retirement age, but their business might have moved into more of a maintenance structure, they're more of a builder. So we look at a couple things, we look at what type of entrepreneur are they, because not everybody is the same type. And then what is the goal? for the business and then the harder one is what is the goal of the business for you personally as the business owner, right? Is it to create financial freedom and then what's the actual number on that so you just don't have moving goalposts or is it to, is it a mission driven founder who wants to bring a certain experience or service to the world and then when does that got wrapped up or whatnot. So like looking at the impact of like what are they trying to do with the business? And then what is that going to do personally so we don't forget that there's a person there, not just a custodian of a business, right? So putting that back into it as well, I think is an interesting one. It's a very, very complicated area to work in. So I think with a lot of my business clients, business psychology clients, we're in it to win it for a long time. They're very consistent with it.

Claire: Yes. Yes, exactly. And I think it's important. Well, I think it's important for everyone. I mean, I would recommend everyone, you know, go into therapy. But I think specifically for my business owner clients, it's very, very important, you know, as not only to deal with issues and limiting beliefs that come up, but also to maintain one's mental health. Because if you are not physically and mentally well, you're not going to be able to do anything.

Andrea McTague: 100%. And I think that that gets pushed on even more when all of a sudden there are so many people relying on you and so on and so on. Let's talk specifically, let's talk about some of the limiting beliefs that we see most commonly and this is not an exhaustive list at all, but some of the limiting beliefs that we see most commonly that block or interrupt business success, entrepreneurial success, whatever we're to call it, or like just success in any like professional domain or career domain that you want. But talk to me, we talked a little bit about

Claire: Yeah, we are. Thank you.

Andrea McTague: I'm not capable, right? And so this functional need, need to be capable. So they're like often doing this like hyper, hyper self-reliance thing where it's like, I'm going to figure it out on my own. And you're like, so how do you see that showing up as like a negative impact on, on business success?

Claire: Yeah. the it tends to bring out, sort of difficulty, fear of scaling and difficulty scaling the business. You know, you kind of tend to have difficulty, really envisioning how it's going to scale and being able to adapt to building it. a fear of delegation feeling like, you know, you have to do it all kind of thing. that is very common in, my clients.

Andrea McTague: Yes, I should be able to do all the things, right? Because I need to be capable. You're like, yeah, but why don't you just let your managerial accountant be capable? Or why don't you let your admin girl that's better at doing Excel than you be capable? And then you go be capable at something else, right? If you remove that, you're able to do that. So it definitely gets in the realm of delegation and hiring and building out teams and scaling for sure, for sure.

Claire: Yes! Yeah. And I understand that too, because it kind of comes with, there's a bit of a myth. Well, it's partly true, but it's a bit of a myth as well that, you know, we've been taught that as founders, entrepreneurs, we have to do it all. It's all up to you. You know, we are the one who, yeah, and we are the one at the end of the day is ours. So we are responsible for everything.

Andrea McTague: Everything's top down, da da da da da.

Claire: And, that's not the case. mean, that's why everything in life is, you know, you need a village. And so you need to hire the, the best. I think Sarah Blakely of the founder of Spank said it very well. She said, hire your weaknesses, whatever you're weak on, hire that person, somebody who's can do that for you. Now.

Andrea McTague: 100%.

Claire: That doesn't mean that you get to let them run free and just do whatever and you're not involved. I you still have to be involved, but you can, you don't have to do with all.

Andrea McTague: Yeah, seeing lame people as resources for the gaps. Like know one of the things that we do at ShiftGrit and our internal business team, but also I do often with clients is something called trait theory, where we look at like, we do a little like inventory, like, okay, here's your traits, here's the contexts in which those traits are positive, and here's the context in which those traits are not so positive, negative, and then we'll develop some mitigators for it. And sometimes and often the mitigator is hire somebody else to do that. Don't put Andrea in charge of like time management. That's not a thing. I'm great at getting into a flow state. That's the positive context of that. Negative context of that is I'm great at getting into a flow state, which means time, food, like that. Like don't put me in charge of like planning when lunches, cause I'll just forget and everyone will be starving and then whatnot. But the mitigator might be something like delegate somebody else to do that. You'll notice if I'm ever running one of the trainings, it's not me that runs the time for those. But

Claire: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: it sometimes also is have a strategy for it. like a really specific agenda that's time stamped for a meeting or whatnot, or, you know, put in some buffer time into the schedule if I have to, I don't know, record a podcast at a reasonable specific time. Something like that, right? So we, think that when entrepreneurs understand also that you can use psychology to identify these specific things and then have very concrete solutions to them in combination with the removal of the limiting beliefs.

Claire: Yes. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: just we're looking at efficiency and I've never met an entrepreneur or business owner that is not hyper interested in efficiency because time crunch, right? So a little bit of those, but I think that that kind of pushes on another really common limiting belief that we see in this population, which is I'm powerless because in order to access any of those things, any of those solutions or even to access the

Claire: Absolutely. Yes. Exactly.

Andrea McTague: mentorship, the therapy, the consultation, the help for gaining access to that kind of information is you have to feel like you are empowered. And if you have the limiting belief, I'm powerless, you're not going to feel that.

Claire: That's right, exactly. And then the opposite of that, creates this dysfunctional need to control everything, right? And again, it goes back to the, can't delegate anymore because I have to control it all.

Andrea McTague: Or you get people that mess up their culture because the I'm powerless has the dysfunctional need of I need to be powerful. And then you're not doing like a servant leadership vibe. Often you're doing that. Maybe it's micromanaging. Maybe it's a little bit like cold and bossy, a little bit of like do this because I pay you kind of stuff, which is obviously super awesome for culture. And then you'll get resistance and some people management stuff usually come out of that. And for the entrepreneur, quite a bit of frustration. Like I told them, I explained, and they're not doing it. And then we see them kind of like leading through frustration or anger often, which turns out people don't love and don't respond well to, rather than kind of being like an inspiring leader.

Claire: Yes. Absolutely, exactly. And so some of the when you have the I am powerless belief, some of the it manifests its way by feeling like you don't like you don't you're controlled by your clients or by their needs or so they tend to you know, sometimes they you can run into an issue where It happens in our business where, you know, the client wants, the client's always going to want the best product for the least amount of money, right? That's their interest. So, but what can happen is if I feel powerless, then, you know, you can end up getting sucked into that. And yeah, like I don't have, I don't have control over that, over my price. I have to meet the customer's always right kind of thing.

Andrea McTague: 100%. Being like, okay.

Claire: And then you end up losing. And if that happens consistently, then all of a sudden you're in a bad situation where you're losing money.

Andrea McTague: yet. I also see that I'm powerless one popping up when I don't know, I love the book, the E-Myth. Like I read it like five billion times. I once in a very, very like terrible period for the business. And I was like, I hate everything. I read it and I was like, this makes sense. But there is a period where the entrepreneur usually gets so burnt out that they abdicate to like one of their right-hand people. And they're like, hey, you just run this, say ops manager or whatever, whatever. And what ends up happening is they're doing that. that abdication is from the limiting belief I'm powerless. So they give it to the other person, which then actually, and this is the fun thing about limiting belief patterns and pattern theory, is that every single one of the limiting beliefs is a self-fulfilling prophecy. So you might run through that I'm powerless, I need to be powerful, but then there'll be some opt-out, which when we enact the opt-out, then makes it so that you're powerless. And so they're essentially effectively giving up their power and their control over the business that they legitimately should exercise some of to somebody else. So you're describing it in the scenario where they're giving that power to the client. Sometimes they give it to a particular staff. And then it never ends well because then they are powerless. And then either the business runs them, the employee runs them, the clients run them, et cetera. And it compounds that feeling of powerlessness, which would have been established really, really early on in life. Which brings us to another super, super common one. And you touched on this a little bit, but it's that I'm

Claire: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: a failure or I'm going to fail. Talk to me a little bit about that one.

Claire: Yeah, that, you know, is super common in in small businesses, particularly when you know, either at the beginning, when you're starting up or when you're starting to face challenges. And how that shows up is very often in procrastination, which I

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm.

Claire: you know, struggled with this limiting belief and then all of a sudden you start to avoid. And so, you know, my famous avoiding the financials and.

Andrea McTague: or the sales calls or like whatever the big ick of the moment is, I think.

Claire: Yes, exactly. Because, whatever I do, I'm going to fail at it anyway. So what's the point of even trying and so you end up trying to avoid the very thing that you need to do to succeed because you're afraid that you're going to fail.

Andrea McTague: Well, and I think it also does this wonderful thing, and I'd say that all the limiting beliefs do, but this one in particular is you've got your little walnut brain talking smack to you in the background, being like, why even try that? It's not gonna end well, you're gonna fail, you're gonna screw it up, et cetera, et cetera. Which that back chatter, that negative self-talk, and then the emotional response that comes with it, what it does is it ends up just taking a bunch of mental real estate. So that mental real estate could be used for creativity, problem solving, strategic launching, chilling out, having a nice coffee, whatever. But it's so occupied by that looping, ruminating, like it's not gonna work, it's not gonna work, it's not gonna work, what are you gonna do if it's not gonna work, what if the bank pulls a loan, what if, what if, what if, and all that catastrophizing, which takes just a ton of effort, both physically and emotionally and mentally to manage. So I think one of the things I like is when we rip these out of people's heads, they just get back a lot of like thought freedom.

Claire: Okay. Yes, absolutely. That's very true. Particularly at night, a lot of my clients talk about rumination at night and it becomes such a cycle that they feel like they have no control over this rumination and, you know, and they wake up in the middle of the night and it starts to take control over them and they spiral and exactly. And then once we remove the limiting belief, then all of a sudden it's like,

Andrea McTague: and mental real estate. Bye. Mm-hmm. Yep. 100 % because then you don't have the spike of the cortisol that's causing that some of that like wake up in the middle of the night and I think that they're so busy running around the chicken hip with the head cut off kind of thing during the day that's why it stockpiles tonight because the other thing I find with entrepreneurs that are like in the thick of it is they really really have a resistance to taking time to

Claire: You can see the relief in them.

Andrea McTague: do kind of like nothing thinking, like creating some space. I'm like, well, when are you gonna come up with the solutions to these things that you're having problems with if you don't have any space to think about it, right? Because you're just like going, going, going, doing, doing, high level of urgency. And that's why I think so much of that time when they go finally put their head on their pillow at night, then all those thoughts are like, here's all the problems that you haven't been addressing or thinking about. And then let's like do them at double speed and race and race and race and race. So we get some like nice sleep disturbance, which of course is super, super great for stress, right?

Claire: Yeah. Yeah, and mood. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: Yeah, oh, 100 % and everything, because I know when I'm tired, I'm just going to be 100 % less useful and less productive, but then you're piling on more urgency. So we're kind of running it into like, you know, some nice adrenal fatigue and burnout at that point, because it's like layering it and layering it, I think for a lot of entrepreneurs. We talked a little bit already about I'm irresponsible and that dysfunctional need of I need to be responsible for everything and the overworking and all of that. But and we spoke a little bit about the I don't deserve.

Claire: Yeah. Thanks.

Andrea McTague: One thing about the I don't deserve limiting belief though is the dysfunctional need for that one is I deserve it. And you talked a little bit about how you see a lot of entrepreneurs neglect their health or get into some negative coping mechanisms. That's related to this limiting belief often. You want to tell me a little bit about why.

Claire: So some of the patterns or some of the behaviors that come out of that is undercharging, for example. So because I don't deserve what I'm worth, I'm going to give in to others and not really charge when I need to for that. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea McTague: Or demand payments sometimes. You're like, you got the thing for me, give me the money, please. Which is a weird conversation to have, but it occurs more often than one would think, I think.

Claire: That's right. Yes, exactly. And sometimes necessarily. And then having difficulty with confrontation. So not being able to handle conflicts or confrontation in an assertive way, in a very productive way, but either being very passive, very aggressive, or passive aggressive sometimes.

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Or I see people doing that thing where they will have to collect like 8,000 data points, even though their gut already knows, their mind already knows, but they're like, I'm just going to make sure that this staff is doing, I'm just going to make sure. And you're like, you already know it's a client that never pays you, but why do you got to see that one more time? And we'll see that in the I don't deserve or even like that I cannot trust. But the other thing I think with the dysfunctional need of I deserve it, that's when we see

Claire: Yes.

Andrea McTague: often an uptick in entitlement kind of attitudes, but also like alcohol, food, comfort spending, affairs, or these other kind of like behaviors that are opt-outs to feeling deserving. And then when they do that sort of thing, which is meant to kind of balance the stress levels, then it is like, see, I did this shitty thing, so now I really don't deserve, like this is what I am like.

Claire: You behaviors. Yeah,

Andrea McTague: Or I snapped at my employee

Claire: that felt a little crop just.

Andrea McTague: so I don't deserve, I'm terrible, da, da, da, da, which goes kind of closely related to the I'm a horrible person, I'm a bad person. So we see that one quite a bit. And I think one of the books I really, really love is Radical Candor. We do crucial conversations, Radical Candor, and they're kind of all the same of that. Getting my business owners okay with having uncomfortable conversations early before they turn into giant disaster situations.

Claire: Yeah, that's right. Right. Yes.

Andrea McTague: But again, it's just the Yankee and a couple of the limiting beliefs and then they're able to do that. And I think that this is like one of the reasons why often these people are very well read. They've listened to the podcast. They've read Jim Collins. They've looked at the Simon Sinek start with why they've looked at traction. They've gotten all of these informational resources on how to help and how to run a business. And then they're still stuck with the like, yeah, but I can't have that radical candor conversation. Because every time I go to do it, I'm like, oh, Claire's in her office. I could talk to her about that hard thing now, but it's like a, and then the walnut brain gets all in the way. was like, you know what? Maybe we should just go for a lunch instead. Maybe we should just, yeah, maybe we should just go do something else and avoid, avoid, avoid, right? And I think that that's the intersection of, it is very, very difficult to launch any of the strategic initiatives or launch the information without, if there is that walnut brain activation, that threat brain, because it's going to win.

Claire: Yeah, every time. One of the things that I really like about working with you, Andrea, is that you have addressed that with one of your values, your core values in the company, which is truth over comfort. So having that belief and right away, like I remember one of my first discussions with you, you you had laid out your the governing values of chifrin and one of them being truth over comfort. you know, I'd rather we'd rather have that conversation upfront in a positive way, but an assertive way. And then that avoids that uncomfortable conversation that happens from that, you know, limiting belief.

Andrea McTague: Yes. What gives people the ability to correct, right? And it's usually a lot easier to correct something early versus it's become this dynamic. And then it's got to be like, well, maybe the only correction is you're to fire the employee or the only or it changes the culture and everybody's mad at each other or whatever. Or you've got, you know, you've created these really bad patterns with the client to then, you know, you're resentful of and they're not happy and so on. And I think that over comfort, this by the way is the limiting belief that was, the, sorry, the core value that was added by Kent. Because it is uncomfortable often to say the truth, but it's also something that we can kind of practice. So we can get at it by getting rid of the limiting belief that's blocking at it. But we also like, and you'll hear me say this one, and for sure you've heard me with this line of like, exposure very reliably creates extinction. avoidance creates phobic behaviors. What that means is the more you avoid doing something, whether it's having hard conversations, whether it's skiing, whatever, the more scared you will be. It increases the fear structure versus if you expose yourself to those difficult things, those challenge pieces, which we do in our client sessions in an imaginal exposure kind of therapeutic modality, but you can also do in the wild by going and exposing yourself to like, you're just like, okay, I know my walnut brain is really activated, but I gotta go talk to Claire about that hard thing. I'm just gonna do it. And I think that's like face the fear and do it anyway, kind of scenario. And then it's kind of goes down a little bit from there. Obviously we get into another limiting belief of like, I'm not in control, very similar to like.

Claire: Exactly.

Andrea McTague: I'm powerless that pops up a lot. And your business story definitely exemplifies that where you're like, okay, we got this plan and pandemic and okay, we got this thing. a competitor enters the market. So we're gonna see a lot of that and you the different patterns that kind of can come out. And I think one of the big effects of that is just that the entrepreneur or founder often just becomes the bottleneck in the business.

Claire: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, with all due respect to my husband, that would be one of his. Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, I mean, that very often, mean, logistically, because we are a small business and we're a very skill intensive business. So it's very difficult to find employees that have that skill set that can do the job. But

Andrea McTague: Someone's gotta be. Someone's gotta be, right?

Claire: It does mean that sometimes the owner can be the bottleneck and can be the one that holds it up. And sometimes it's like, I have to let go. Let go with the doc. He sort of says, okay, I'm hanging on to the doc for dare life and now I've got to let go and swim and we'll deal with it. We'll deal with what happens. We'll deal with the employee who accidentally crashes our machine.

Andrea McTague: Yes.

Claire: But you know what I mean? Yeah.

Andrea McTague: Yeah, or like the stuff that's inevitably gonna happen, right? Because it can't be smooth silent. And I think that that's one of the things that we took on is like when we launch things, we used to kind of have this thing where it's like, okay, it's got to be 100%. But the thing is nothing is 100 % when you launch it, you'll get it to a certain point, you're like, okay, just do it, put it out into the world. It's not gonna go how you plan. But then you can iterate and change it and whatnot. But I think that that takes a lot to kind of get to the mental landscape of that sometimes.

Claire: Exactly. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: So we've got a couple interesting things.

Claire: I also think that one that comes up a lot is I'm unsafe or I'm at risk. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: yeah, 100 % because sometimes you literally are like sometimes the bank is going to pull the loan. Sometimes you're going to run out of money. Sometimes it's the night before payroll and you're like, really hope that check comes in tomorrow morning or I'm going to have a bunch of unhappy people or sometimes it's even just there's so much activation now with the like online and reviews landscape is like, you know, it's a shitty glass door review or it's that client that's posted something on the Facebook page that they hate working with CNCs. or whatever, whatever. And so there's so many different things that can activate that failure construct or that risk thing. You're like, if this happens, then what's going to happen next? So I think controlling for that. I think that's why it's so important for business owners to play in the mental landscape of cleaning these things, because they act as like little traumas.

Claire: Yes. They do exactly. And they prevent you from living the life that you want to live there and doing the things that you want to do. They kind of keep you stuck in a loop. And we talk about that in therapy, we talk about these patterns that develop that just keep consistently looping over and over and over.

Andrea McTague: next Yes, yes. Yeah, if you're seeing one of the things I say to my clients like look if you're seeing a different version of the same problem occurring in your business over and over and over generally the problem is you It's you because it's something that and it's not necessarily like you are the reason that that's happening It's like you are maybe your focus is over here and not on addressing the underlying which then means that there's just some block to doing that because everybody knows that would be

Claire: Yeah, exactly.

Andrea McTague: great and they want to solve the problem, but there's some block thing that we got to identify. And I think that's when we get into things like how can we get entrepreneurs to recognize when it's fear making their decisions rather than like strategic execution, which is of course where we want to stay because it's going to go vacillate between the two. But I think that's something that I do with my people. And we talked a little bit about separating identity versus outcomes.

Claire: Mm-hmm.

Andrea McTague: But I think one thing you'd mentioned to me before when we were talking is about how to get the business owners to be able to be present wherever they are in their life. So if they're like with their kids or whatever, can you speak to me a little bit about that?

Claire: Yeah, sure. So it's, think understanding and being very aware of what is important to you. So what are the various different areas of your life and what's important to you and, and understanding that the problems in your business are always going to be there. But the things that are most important to you may not always be there or they'll change, you know, particularly when you have young families, right?

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm.

Claire: You know, you miss opportunities when you are too tied to the outcome and your identity is so wrapped up in the business that you forget all the other roles that you embody in your life.

Andrea McTague: Or sometimes just like have difficulty launching the strategies. Like I know I work very often on like, can we not check email 400 times in the evening when we're at the kids soccer practice or when we're spending time with the wife here, whatever, whatever. But it's not as simple as just saying like, don't do that. It's like, okay, let's go and look at why you're doing that. Cause it's generally an emotional reason. Like most people don't need to do that. They cognitively understand that. So we go.

Claire: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: into it and we're like, what are you doing that is taking your head out of being mindful where you are? Because there's, and there's some interesting research on it and I probably should have pulled it further than that, but anyway, business owners don't have the same kind of work-life balance as say a nine to five employee, but the thing that creates that work-life balance feeling for them most often is being able to be fully present wherever they are. So if they're working out that they're fully present there, if they're on vacation, they're fully present there, if you're at your kids soccer game. that that's where your head is at. If you're having dinner with your wife, that's where your head is at. If you are in the management meeting, that's where your head is at. And the ability to be immersed in their experience and be very mindful about that, that's what gives that feeling of calm. But so often, we'll see them try to like layer, I'm gonna do like five things at once and we're like not gonna give any gap time. And then while I'm driving from my kids soccer game back to the office, then I'm gonna also have a meeting with this person and I try to get the sales call in or whatever. And it's that like,

Claire: Mm-hmm.

Andrea McTague: load loading and not putting those like white spaces. And my analogy for this is always like, look, there's a reason when you go into art gallery that you don't generally see like 40 pieces of art on one wall. You see like one painting and a bunch of white space because you can't perceive things the same way if there's too much stuff in the way. So a lot of what my work is with entrepreneurs or like professional whatever is creating that white space, that blank space.

Claire: Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly. And it takes practice, you know, it's hard to like we were talking about rumination before, and how you can sort of spiral doing the opposite and being present wherever you're at is it takes practice because you are going to start going, my God, I forgot about that email. And no, I've got that meeting tomorrow and

Andrea McTague: do a lot of that. yeah. Mm-hmm.

Claire: you know, I've got to make sure that I get this done, blah, blah, blah. It's always going to be there. So it's about practicing, you know, this is important to me. So I'm going to be present wherever I am. And whenever that comes in, you can always write a note. There are lots of strategies that you can do to make sure that you don't forget. it just takes practice and persistence, you know, to make.

Andrea McTague: Well, and the layering of those strategies, and I think also being in the absolute thick of it personally is always fun because you realize it's kind of like a Jesus construct or a Nirvana construct where there's this ideal that you want to get to where like every single thing that I do, I'm going to become completely mindful and in it. But it's an ideal construct. We're just kind of like aiming more in that direction. We're just going to get more in that direction because it's not necessarily something that we can like... perfectly launched because there are going to be those days where you're like, I am very mindful. Everything is good. And then you're like, what? There's a pandemic? You know, and there will be these things that like throw us and realists and whatnot. And I think the other last thing and I'm probably let's end a little bit on this is moving people. One of the goals with the removal of the limiting beliefs is moving my clients from seeing challenges and scary things and bad things and stuff that doesn't go their way.

Claire: Exactly.

Andrea McTague: or like, you know, they're attached to an outcome, but they didn't get that big contract or whatever the thing is, the bad things that occur, moving them from seeing them as a failure construct to a learning opportunity. And I think that completely changes the whole game in terms of efficiency of outcome, but also stress levels.

Claire: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Because it's feedback. It's all feedback. very, I'm a very strong believer that I don't I intensely dislike the word failure, because you really can't fail. You can't fail unless you don't try. If you don't try and you wish that you had done something, but you didn't, that's failure. But just because you know, yeah, yeah.

Andrea McTague: Yes. Yes. Or you don't attempt to learn something. would say that would be the other real failure is like you look at it and you're like, well, and you're like, no, no, contemplate the thing. What went on? We like calling it just because we're morbid, like doing an autopsy on the thing.

Claire: Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I like that. So, you know, instead, looking at it as as feedback, you know, it's just another I think it was Edison who said, I've tried, I've discovered 1000 ways that the light bulb didn't work. You know, that's all it is. It's not failure is just learning from that wasn't the outcome I wanted. So how am I going to get the outcome I do want?

Andrea McTague: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And I love that you brought up Edison because one of the things that has been really impactful on the evolution of my mind in the entrepreneurial landscape is listening to the stories of other entrepreneurs and other founders, because, you know, we we see the outcome. say, you know, put rockets on the thing or so and so like Henry Ford, you know, created this giant business or whatever, Wal-Mart, Sam Walton is the richest man in America. We see like the clickbait at the end. But when you hear the whole story.

Claire: Yeah.

Andrea McTague: You're like, he also sucked at that. And then he also tried this a bazillion times. And this also didn't work. And then he also almost lost his house and went bankrupt. Or she almost lost her thing. Or Sarah Blakely was banked. She went around to how many different people, and they were like, no, this is a stupid idea. So then when you start to see it in context of the whole, the overnight success that took 10 years, 20 years, whatever it is.

Claire: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: you start to put it into a more realistic perspective. So I think that's something that's very important for business owners is to take in whether it's via podcasts or audiobooks or whatever, some other information, talk to other people because it makes it more realistic. Sometimes we can get really stuck in our own internal microcosm of like, everybody else is doing this perfectly and I'm just screwing it up. And you're like, highly unlikely because it kind of gives that zoomed out perspective then of course. you know, can identify some of the fears versus values decisions. we are really good. And one thing I think I will stress is when our clients come in, they don't know what the limiting beliefs that are activated are. We pick them and we'll help them find them. So it's not like you have to come prepared and be like, I have the limiting belief. I'm not good enough or whatever, whatever. It's based on like certain patterns of behavior will demonstrate what is apparent. So I know you have a special fun picking those out and running those patterns.

Claire: I love them. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: in session two. Right? See your little light bulb. But why do you like that? Like when you run a pattern, why do you like it so much? What happens?

Claire: I think it makes it very clear to the client what is going on. think understanding the why, know, at ShiftGrit we're very big on helping the client see the why, of why something is happening, how it came across, how it came up, why it's maintained, and then what we can do about it. So there's hope, right? We identify, so the first part of our therapy, we do a very enriched, I don't know if I'm jumping into it, so forgive me if I'm.

Andrea McTague: I know, it's fine. We would basically do like a big, gather a bunch of information. Kind of like doing diagnostics to a medical person doing the examination and x-rays and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Claire: Yeah. Exactly. So the first part of our the first session, session and half, we'll talk to the client, we'll ask them a gazillion questions on every aspect of their life. And we'll get all the information that we need about their childhood about, you know, and then their current life, to be able to identify what non nurturing elements came from their childhood and how they developed into these limiting beliefs. And then we will talk to the client and identify, tell them what limiting beliefs we believe that have come up for them. And then we'll run these patterns, we'll run, okay, what's the non nurturing element that created this limiting belief? What is the limiting belief? And how does it operate in the various different areas in your life? So how does it create reinforcing memories and experiences that reinforce the limiting belief, how does it then turn into a dysfunctional need, which is basically a belief that we have to counteract or buffer against the pain of the limiting belief? And then so what are the activities that they have to do in order to meet this dysfunctional need, which is basically insatiable, you can never really meet the dysfunctional need because it's functional. And then how does it create this, the feelings, the negative feelings that come up for you. you know, and creates this pressure cooker of discomfort. And then what happens is, as like a pressure cooker, what ends up happening is you end up exploding. It becomes so much pressure to do all of these activities to meet this need that you can never meet in order to not feel the limiting belief. And then it ends up you do this opt out behavior, which is like a self sabotaging behavior that will access like a stress relief, a way to stop having to exhaust it.

Andrea McTague: Yeah, just like a yeah, you're so much more elegant than me. I always call it the effort effort moment. There's half a pile with it or whatever. But yeah.

Claire: Hahaha! You're just so much real, more real than me.

Andrea McTague: I don't know, I'm so much more gonna have my move. I'll clean it up one day. But that is it. And I think one of the things that was really important for us is to be able to explain that. And it's really fun when people are like, oh, this is why this happened. Turns out you're not insane. Turns out you're not out of control. It's just this. And then we just go in and remove it, which is fun. So I think that that creates that stability, more mental real estate, and then just kind of gives those business owners

Claire: Yeah, you have it. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: a little bit more space to get at the problem and to handle the kind of, I guess like furnace roller coaster, whatever analogy you want to use that is running a business. And then there's a whole bunch of other strategies we'll layer on top of that as well. So Claire, thank you so much for sharing like both your personal entrepreneurial experience and your clinical insight. I think it's really nice when we've got people who have.

Claire: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: lived experience with things because like you get it, get it. And then you also are like, God, this is the lens and that there's some like structured process for it. An SOP, if you will, for all of the business owners out there. And I think that that general thing, the big takeaway is that entrepreneurship is not just a business journey, it's an identity journey. Many of the struggles that business owners face are not about like strategy or skill, which is where they get stuck, right? But about these

Claire: Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea McTague: non-nurturing elements that set the stage for the encoding of these limiting belief-based patterns and then the limiting beliefs basically like start tying two things and activating that stress brain which takes over and makes us a bit dumber than we want to be in that moment. But great news that these beliefs are just they're just patterns just not real and I think this goes back to that whole thing of like humans are programmable and what was programmed into our early continues to run, that program doesn't just stop automatically, but we can use some exposure and some fun little counter conditioning techniques to change the program. And then when we've got the different program, we see that absence of reaction, essentially. So if you would like to explore your own limiting beliefs or patterns or have the delightful Claire run some amazing ones for you or any of the other talented brain benders at ShiftGrit, you can... Find us at ShiftGrit.com. Claire is on the website. Check out her profile if you'd like. And if you found this episode helpful, please share it with a fellow entrepreneur or somebody who has the terrible fate of living or being related to one of us. And leave us a review somewhere people can find this conversation. And if you don't mind, if you have a topic that you'd like to hear us talk about, please leave a little note in the show comments. and we will add some of the books that we mentioned and a way to get a hold of Claire directly if you want to have a little chat with her as well. And again, just a reminder, this is not a psychology treatment. So if it's just for educational purposes, if you would like to get some of that, you can reach out to us or any other licensed professional. So thank you so much for joining me today, Claire. I hope to see you on the podcast again soon, soon, soon. on variety of topics that we could yammer on about for a long time. I appreciate that. And to you guys, thank you very much for listening and I'll see you next time on The Shift Show.

Claire: Yeah, that's good. Bye.