Latest / Beyond the Needle: The Aesthetics Business Podcast / The Confidence Toolkit for Aesthetic Practitioners

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The Confidence Toolkit for Aesthetic Practitioners · Beyond the Needle: The Aesthetics Business Podcast

• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Be On the Needle, the Aesthetics Business Podcast.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Each week, I'm here to share real, actionable strategies and bring on expert guests to help you level up, attract more patients, and build a standout brand.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's turn your passion into a thriving business together.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Real quick before we get started.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now I know this from experience both as a business owner and as a former clinic manager.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: The operations side never gets easier as a clinic grows.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: Staff schedules, payments, marketing, all of it pulling attention away from the treatment room.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is unless you have Gloss Genius, the intelligent system that does all of that work for you, so you can focus on the work you love and watch your revenue grow.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Gloss Genius is sponsoring this episode and is giving you an exclusive code.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: Enter code Needle at glossgenus.com for 50% of your first two months of their MedSpa and aesthetic plans.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Available to US businesses only.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, let's get into the episode.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Hi everyone and welcome back to the Beyond the Needle podcast.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you listened to the Limiting Beliefs episode a few episodes ago now, today is essentially the follow-on to that conversation because that episode was all about the thoughts themselves, where they come from, why they feel true when they're not, and how to start challenging them.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I got a great response from that episode.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: And anything I do kind of around mindset tends to get a great response.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I get a lot of messages from practitioners saying they really resonated with it.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's something that, you know, they took a lot away from and it has helped them move forward in some way in their business.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I know that these types of episodes really land with you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: But what I now want to touch on is confidence and specifically the psychology of confidence and how to feel the fear and do it anyway, which is kind of a philosophy I live by myself.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: So today's episode isn't about the limiting beliefs.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's about what you do when the belief is sitting there, loud and insistent, and you want to move through it.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: You want to do the hard things and find the confidence to do the hard things that are going to move you forward in business and help you grow.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think confidence is really misunderstood by people.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: We see people who seem certain and assured and comfortable in their own skin and we think they just have it.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's a quality they were born with or that arrived at some point in their lives that I'm still waiting for.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that idea that confidence is a state that you arrive at before you do the scary thing is one of the most limiting misconceptions in business, and it keeps genuinely talented, brilliant practitioners smaller than they should be every single day.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I'm going to unpack today.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: What confidence actually is, why fear is not the opposite of it, and what to do when you feel terrified, but you want to move forwards.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a lot to unpack in this episode, and I think some of it is really going to challenge the way you think about yourself.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: But before we do get into it, quick reminder: if you do enjoy these episodes, don't forget to follow and subscribe so that you're notified every time a new episode goes live.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And do leave me a little review as well.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: It really does mean a lot.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now grab a pen and paper and let's get into it.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: So let's start by talking about what confidence isn't.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't the absence of fear, it isn't certainty, it isn't knowing exactly how something will go before you do it, and it definitely isn't waiting until you feel ready, which I think is the mistake a lot of people make.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence is something much more active than that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's the willingness to act in the direction you want to go despite not being sure of the outcome.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's doing something before you're certain you can do it well.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's stepping into the discomfort of being seen, of being judged, of possibly getting it wrong.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And doing it anyway because the alternative of staying small and staying safe costs more than the risk.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: The reason this matters so much for practitioners is that there are so many specific moments in building an aesthetics business where confidence is required before you have any evidence that things will go well.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: The first time you post a piece of content that shares a real opinion, the first time you raise your prices to the level you think your work is worth, the first time you have a difficult conversation with a patient about what they actually need rather than what they came in asking for.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: The first time you say no to a treatment you don't think is right for somebody.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: None of these moments feel confident before you actually do them.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: They feel vulnerable and uncertain and slightly terrifying.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: But the confidence comes afterwards.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's built by doing, not by waiting until you're ready.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And understanding that fundamentally changes how you approach the scary things.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the people who I see do the best in their aesthetics business aren't necessarily the ones who are oozing confidence.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they appear confident to a lot of people.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'd look at their content on Instagram and think they're really confident.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you'd watch them speak on stage at a conference and think they're really confident.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: But that doesn't mean that they were always confident.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: The people I see do the best are the ones that push themselves, are the ones that push themselves to do new things, are the ones that push themselves to speak on camera, are the ones that push themselves to post content that feels maybe slightly out of their comfort zone.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're not afraid to try these things.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or they are afraid, but they feel the fear and they do it anyway.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then over time, as they do these things that scare them a little bit, their confidence naturally grows bit by bit until they're the type of person that you look at and think, wow, that is a really confident person.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: The fight really is in the small steps.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's something I want to say before we really get into the specific fears that practitioners face because I think it reframes the whole conversation.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: When we think about doing something courageous, we tend to picture, you know, the big end dramatic moment, the post that went out, the price increase that was announced, the conversation that was had, the device that was bought, the event that was launched.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: We measure ourselves against those visible moments and we think I'm not brave enough to do that, so I'm not brave.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the truth is that the fight, the actual act of courage, is almost never that singular visible moment.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's in all the small things that happened beforehand.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: The days you showed up to create content when you didn't feel like it, the hours you spent learning and refining your skills when it would have been easier to coast along at the same pace that you always have been.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: The times you asked for feedback and actually listened to it, the the decision to get back up after something didn't go well instead of letting it confirm every fear you had about yourself, those are the acts of courage.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: Those are where confidence gets built.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't in the big moments, but the small, consistent ones that nobody sees.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of practitioners are fighting harder than they give themselves credit for.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason they don't see it is because they're comparing their everyday effort to other people's visible kind of highlight real moments that they see on Instagram, someone else's breakthrough post, their full diary, their new clinic opening, the collaboration they landed, the KOL position that they've been offered, the post that went viral, and from the outside, that looks effortless, but it never is.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the part that's visible, it's just the part, the end part that you see.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you got out of bed this week and showed up in your business even when it felt hard, that was the fight.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you sent a message you'd been putting off or posted something before you felt ready or had a conversation that you've been avoiding, that was the fight.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those things matter more than any single big moment.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, now let's get specific because the fears in this industry are very specific ones, and there are a lot of them, a lot of specific fears that I hear from practitioners that hold them back in their business.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: There's the fear of being seen.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is probably the most universal one, and it shows up in so many different ways.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: The reluctance to put your face on your content, the captions that get written and rewritten until they've been softened into something so safe and generic that they barely say anything at all.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: The opinion you hold back from sharing because you're not sure the industry will agree, the story you don't post because the lighting isn't quite right, or because you feel that you didn't maybe look your best in it, or because you stumbled over a word, or because you're worried what other practitioners will think.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: The fear of being seen is really the fear of judgment, and the specific flavour of it in aesthetics often has professional roots.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you came from a clinical background, from the NHS or from another healthcare setting, the culture you were trained in didn't reward visibility or self-promotion.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: It actually looked down on it.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: You don't self-promote, you don't broadcast your opinions, you earn your reputation through your clinical work, and bringing those values into a world where visibility is one of the most important tools you have creates a real and very uncomfortable internal conflict within people.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: But what I want you to understand is that the people who are most likely to judge harshly for showing up, for sharing your perspective, for being visible are almost never your ideal patients.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: They're practitioners or people who feel uncomfortable with visibility themselves and are projecting that discomfort outward.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: Your ideal patient isn't cringing at your content.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: They're just grateful to have found someone who sounds like they understand her at last.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I think in this industry, it's very unique.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I think I've said this in other episodes.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I don't know, maybe it's because I don't have much experience with any other industries, but I do feel like the SSX industry is quite unique in that compared to other industries, it's quite small, a lot of people know everybody, and they meet each other at conferences, at trainings, everyone kind of knows everyone and has connections, right?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And naturally, you as a practitioner follow a lot of other practitioners in the industry because of that.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of a community, and therefore you are constantly seeing other people's content and comparing yourself to that.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other hand, you know that other practitioners are watching what you're doing.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: But I really think that we need to kind of step away from that a little bit because other practitioners are not the people who you are creating content for.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: You are creating content for your target audience, the patient, the person who you want to be attracting into your clinic, the person you want to be treating.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is the most important thing.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: So you need to be thinking about how you can show up in the best way to serve that person.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: If being seen makes you feel afraid, that's the signal to do it sooner rather than the later.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Fear is pointing you in the direction of what needs to happen, not away from it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: The practitioners who are most comfortably visible now were at some point just as uncomfortable as you are.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_00: The number one thing people say to me when they work with me is, I just really don't like be on camera, it doesn't come natural to me.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I switched the camera on and I clam up.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: I can speak to my patients all day, every day about treatments, about the problems that they're presenting me with.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: But as soon as I start talking about those things on camera, the words just fall out of my brain.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, or they'll say, you know, they can't get their team members for love or money to speak on camera.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's always got to be them, even though they don't already like it themselves, you know.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is like the biggest problem people have when it comes to social media marketing.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, this is just one kind of specific fear that people have that holds them back in their business, but I think it's a big one, you know, showing up on social media and showing up as you.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Again, when people do start finally speaking on camera, a lot of the time they sound a little bit robotic, a little bit forced, a little bit too maybe scripted.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And that really affects how your videos performed because it affects how people perceive your content.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: If it feels like you're kind of building up a wall, that person is who's watching is going to really struggle to connect with you.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I do feel like that's how a lot of people's content comes across.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then they wonder why it doesn't perform as well in terms of views.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side of that, I think it's better to start somewhere to just try.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I say, confidence is built from doing the hard thing.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: The more you push yourself to do it, the more confident you will become.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And over time, you can then refine how you're coming across on camera.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the practitioners who you see who are doing it well now most likely were in exactly the same position as you are at one point, but they just kept going past the discomfort until it became familiar, until it wasn't hard anymore.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: Then there's the fear of clinical judgment translating into business paralysis.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: This one is particularly specific to aesthetics, and I think it's really under talked about.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a real and complicated relationship in this industry between clinical confidence and business confidence.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: Most practitioners I know are extremely confident in their day-to-day work, in their injecting.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: They know their anatomy, they know their products, they know how to assess a face and make great decisions.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: That confidence is real and earned.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: But clinical confidence doesn't automatically translate into business confidence.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, sometimes the practitioners with the highest clinical standards have the hardest time with the business side because the rigor and perfectionism that makes you a brilliant clinician can actually make showing up imperfectly in business feel actively dangerous.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: You know what a good result looks like.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know exactly what can go wrong, you know the risks in a way that someone without your training simply doesn't.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that knowledge, which is an enormous strength in clinical work, can become a really paralyzing force when it comes to the things that business requires.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Putting yourself forward before everything is perfect, making a decision with incomplete information, taking a visible risk with an unknown outcome.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: The reframe here is that good clinical judgment and good business judgment require different things.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: Your work as an aesthetic practitioner is appropriately high stakes and appropriately cautious, but your business decisions, including the confidence to be visible and to back yourself, can afford to be a little bit more experimental.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: A content post that doesn't land isn't a clinical complication.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: A price increase that gets some pushback isn't a patient being harmed.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: Holding your clinical standards to your business decisions is an error that keeps you much more cautious than the situation actually warrants.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then there's the fear of failure.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the one that runs underneath almost everything else, and I want to share how I personally think about it because these are the frameworks that I actually come back to in the moments where fear of getting it wrong would otherwise stop me and hold me back.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: The first thing I remind myself is that I would genuinely rather fail than never try.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: A failure is a lesson and part of the journey.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't make you any less valuable or worthy as a person.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: While I have my health, my ambition, and a clear sense of where I'm going, I want to be in the game.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to reach a point where the option to try has passed because I spent too long being afraid of what might not work.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing, and this sounds flippant, but I really do mean it, is that it's not that deep.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We're tiny specks on a rock flying through space.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone around you is primarily occupied with their own life, their own worries, their own version of all of this and working out what they're doing themselves.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: The number of people paying close enough attention to your failures to form a lasting judgment is extremely small.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And most of them you don't really care about that much anyway.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like you wouldn't really care about their opinion.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: I do love to think about that when I am scared of being judged or scared of failing or scared of doing something because I don't quite feel ready yet.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: I just think to myself, I am literally a tiny little speck on a flying rock in a huge universe in a huge galaxy.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I like, you know, we're all we've all got our own lives going on, you know, and and we're all really engrossed in our own lives.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's when you really think about it, you know, who is actually paying that much attention to you that they're looking at every single tiny mistake you might make.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just remind yourself of that next time you try and talk yourself out of doing something or tell yourself that you're not ready yet.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like you only get one life and one chance to do these things, you know.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you could fail, but it could also be the best decision that you ever made.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I also think it helps to have like an end goal in your mind.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you want to see your life in the next five to ten years?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: And what things do you need to do that are going to help you get there, that can help you reach those goals.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: If this is one of them, if that thing that you feel particularly scared about is one of them, use that end goal, envision that in your mind to help you get there and to help you find the courage to do it because it gives you an incentive to.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: The third thing is something called a five-year rule.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Think about the people who were in your life five years ago who aren't there now.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The friendships that drifted, the colleagues from jobs you've left, the people whose opinions felt enormous at the time.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: Where are they now?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: For most of them, you have no idea.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And the same will be true in five years of the people whose hypothetical judgment you're currently afraid of.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: The people who are meant to be in your life will be there through the winds and through the harder times.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: The rest will be a distant memory, faster than you think.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: And everyone fails.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: Every practitioner and business owner you admire has had things not go to plan.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Launches that were quiet, content that flops, decisions that turned out to be wrong.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: You don't see most of it because people don't talk about it.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: They don't post their failures with the same frequency that they post their wins.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Social media is a highlight reel.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's the best bits of someone's life and someone's business.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the gap between what you see and what's actually happening behind the scenes is much, much bigger than the feed suggests.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the one that means the most to me personally, every significant thing I've built, every meaningful opportunity I've ever had has come from a period of being genuinely scared every single time.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: There hasn't been a moment of real growth in my business that wasn't preceded by discomfort and uncertainty.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And what I found over time is that each time you go through that cycle and come out the other side, your confidence and your ability to do hard and new things really, really grows.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Not because everything works out perfectly, but because you keep finding out that you can handle it.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And even if it feels terrifying at the time, you can do it.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know you can do it because you've done it before.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And for me, this is really true when it comes to speaking engagements.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I naturally am not a good public speaker, I'm not a confident public speaker.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I really actually hate it, but I am trying to make myself unhate it, and I will still say yes to opportunities when they come up.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is one thing that has really got me to like the position I'm in today is that I have never said no to things just because I'm scared.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: I will always say yes at the time and then feel like I regret it later, go through the motions of feeling like, why did I say yes to this?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really don't want to do this.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is, you know, I don't have the time and energy to be putting into the, you know, the the amount I need to psych myself up to actually stand up on stage and speak or to host this online workshop to 50 people, you know.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But afterwards, I'm always glad that I did it, and I'm always happy that I did it.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I, and then when the next opportunity presents itself, I feel slightly less scared because I know what to expect, and I know that I've done it before and like I got through it and the world didn't end, and I didn't lose my train of thought mid-sentence and show myself up on stage like I told myself I would.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: I know that I can do it because I've done it before, and that really is the only way that you will build confidence.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: So let's break down a practical toolkit for acting anyway, for what to actually do with the fear rather than just understanding it, because this is the part most conversations miss.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing that you should do is separate yourself from the feedback.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the most important moves you can make as a business owner is learning to separate how you feel about yourself from how your business is performing in any given moment.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: When these feel like the same thing, and they often do, it's almost impossible to respond usefully to what's actually happening.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, when content, say content on Instagram, doesn't get engagement or the engagement that you thought it would, it's easy for that to become evidence about you as a person in your mind, about the things that you tell yourself that knock your confidence.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: When bookings are slow, it's easy for that to feel like confirmation that people don't want what you offer, or that going into aesthetics was a mistake.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But content performance is a data point, not a verdict on your self-worth.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And slow bookings are, well, quite frankly, they're a natural part of any business and something that happens to all businesses at at least one stage.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: But they're also a strategy signal, not a measure of whether you deserve to be in business or whether you made the right decision doing it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Learning to look at those things with some distance, the same way you'd look at a business problem rather than a personal rejection, changes how quickly you can respond and adjust rather than spiral.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're allowed to feel disappointed when things don't go the way you hoped, but after you felt it, the useful question isn't what does this mean about me, it's what does this tell me about what needs to change?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's looking at it, separating yourself so that it doesn't feel like a personal rejection, and then using that experience to learn from and do something differently in the future.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the next thing that you should do is get genuinely curious when things go wrong.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: The practitioners I see recover fastest from a difficult period are almost always the ones who respond to it with curiosity rather than shame.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: When something isn't working, whether that's content not converting, bookings that are slower than they should be, or inquiries not progressing, the most useful thing you can do is go and find out why rather than deciding you already know.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: That might mean asking an expert to look at your Instagram and to tell you honestly what's landing and what isn't.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It might mean reviewing your inquiry process to see where people are dropping off.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: It might mean looking properly at what your best performing content has in common and asking what the difference actually is.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: Good feedback is almost never comfortable, but practitioners who get stuck are nearly always the ones who avoid it entirely or let it confirm every fear that they already had.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: The ones who move forward treat difficult information as data and ask what.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Needs to change rather than whether they should give up altogether.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I want you to do is decide how you want to show up before the day decides for you.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's a big difference between going through a challenging day reactively and going into it with a clear intention.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the most underrated practical tools for confidence.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're about to do something that makes you nervous, whether that's a difficult consultation, posting something vulnerable, a conversation you've been avoiding, your brain will default to its most anxious setting unless you give it something else to work with.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: The simple version of this is just making a decision in the morning about how you want to approach that day.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just a clear intention in your mind.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm going to hold my ground when I know I'm right.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: Today I'm going to post before I feel ready, or I'm going to post this at 10 o'clock this morning.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: I put it in my reminders, I'm going to do it.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: No going back.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: The post is ready and I'm going to post it.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: That decision made in advance changes what you actually do when the moment arrives because you've already decided.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: You're not making the choice in real time under pressure.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: You're following through on something you committed to earlier.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: You told yourself in your head you're doing it and you're sticking to it.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference between deciding in a calm moment versus trying to summon courage mid-panic is much bigger than it sounds.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: The next thing I want you to do is change the story you're telling yourself.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: So most of us walk into situations where we're slightly on show with a low-level assumption running underneath everything that people are judging us, clocking our weaknesses, hoping we'll stumble.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost never conscious, but it shapes everything about how we present ourselves on the outside and how people perceive us.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when you're about to walk into something that feels exposing, remind yourself that the people on the other side of it almost certainly want you to do well.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: Your patient wants the conversation to go brilliantly because that means she gets what she came for.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: People at your event showed up because they want to learn something useful.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: People who listened to your talk loved it and went away with something new to implement.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: Someone who engaged with the content did so because something drew them in and it gave them value.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And there are always so many more people who genuinely want you to succeed, your patients, your colleagues, your audience, your family, your friends, than the fear inside your head would have you believe.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: So when you operate from that assumption rather than the anxious one, you show up differently.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: Your body language is different, you're more open, you're warmer, you're more present.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that energy is something people feel and respond to.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, ask a different question.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: When fear is loud and you're trying to decide whether to go ahead with something, the question most people ask is, Do I feel confident enough to do this?
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're scared, that question almost always has the same answer.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: No, not quite.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe when things are a little bit more settled or have a little bit more time, or business isn't so busy.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: The question I find more useful is this is this opportunity helping me become the person I want to be?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: That question cuts through to something more important.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's asking whether this is the direction, not whether you feel ready.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because chances are you're almost always never going to feel 100% ready.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: But like I said earlier, if that experience of doing that hard thing is going to help move you closer to the goal, to the person you want to be in the next five to ten years, that is the reason to do something.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: That is the thing to latch onto to motivate yourself to move through that fear.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if the answer is yes, that tends to be enough to take the next step, even when the confidence hasn't quite caught up yet.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, before we wind down this episode, I just want to spend a moment talking about comparison because I do think it is one of the most corrosive things in any industry, you know, and almost impossible to avoid entirely, especially when you spend a lot of time on social media.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Because, like I said earlier, you'll scroll and see a practitioner who appears to be doing really well, to be involved with a lot of brands, to be speaking on a lot of stages, to be getting a lot of great engagement from people and other practitioners.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you think they've got a better aesthetic and their content looks better, and your content can never look like that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: So, what's the point?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, those are the things that you start to tell yourself, and something shifts in your mind when you do that.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what was absolutely fine a moment ago suddenly starts to feel inadequate, and what you've been building starts to feel smaller.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: We're all guilty of this, I think, in a way.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: I do it a lot myself.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But what's really worth remembering is you're comparing your internal reality to someone else's external presentation.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know all your own doubts and difficulties, but you see none of theirs.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: What you're seeing is a created version of a business that has its own hard days, its own uncertainties, its own things that didn't work out, none of which are visible from the outside.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: The practitioners who seem furthest ahead got their through exactly the kind of fear and uncertainty we're talking about today.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: They just did it before you could see them doing it, which means the gap between you and them is almost certainly smaller than it looks, and the path between where you are and where they are is the same one they walked.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Use the people you admire in the industry as evidence of what's possible rather than evidence of what you lack.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: If someone is doing it, that means it's possible.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: The only question is what you're going to do with that information and how you're going to learn and take inspiration from it.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to close by talking about imposter syndrome because what I've come to understand over the years is that imposter syndrome isn't always a sign you're in the wrong room.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's just evidence that you've walked into a bigger one.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: The thing is, growth rarely feels comfortable because, by definition, you're operating beyond what you've already mastered.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: If everything feels familiar and easy and predictable, there's a good chance you've stopped stretching yourself.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: The discomfort isn't a warning, it's a sign that something worth doing is happening.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Confidence is so misunderstood.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: We assume that successful practitioners feel certain that they walk into opportunities, onto stages, into rooms where they have to back themselves feeling completely ready.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And because we don't feel that certainty ourselves, we assume we're not yet at the level where we belong.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: But confidence is built incrementally.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Every uncomfortable action you take is a deposit.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't look like much on any given day, but it compounds into something very real over time.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: The goal isn't to suddenly become a bolder version of yourself, it's to take one slightly uncomfortable action today, and then another one tomorrow, and then another one the day after, and to notice that each time you do, the discomfort is a little more familiar, the action a little more natural, and the evidence base for your own capability a little more solid.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: The fear doesn't disappear and it won't disappear, not overnight anyway.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You just stop interpreting it as a reason to stop and start recognizing it as a sign that you're moving in the right direction.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: So feel the fear, do it anyway, because that is where real growth lives.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to give you a few very quick tips for things that you can start doing today to help grow your confidence and move yourself forwards to wherever it is that you want to go with your business.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, number one, keep an evidence file.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: When self-doubt is loud, your brain needs something to argue back with.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: Just start with a note on your phone.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be anything formal, just a running list of things that go well.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: A patient who left a brilliant review, a consultation that felt really good, a piece of content that got a reply that genuinely moved you, a booking that came from somewhere unexpected.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: When you're in a wobble, you need actual evidence to counter the story your brain is telling.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: And most people have no record of it because they never wrote it down.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: And then in those moments where things don't feel great, you're going to find it very hard to remember the good things.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Next tip: do the scary thing first.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever is sitting on your to-do list that's making you feel slightly anxious, the message you've been putting off sending, the piece of content you keep drafting and deleting, the price conversation you've been avoiding, whatever it is, do that one first.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Not after the admin, not after the emails and everything else that you've got to do on your to do list that day.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do the scary thing first because every hour it sits there, it feels heavier and the resistance grows and it feels harder to battle.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the other side of it, almost every time you'll wonder why you waited so long.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: Third tip, ask yourself what the practitioner you want to be in five years would do.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: So not the practitioner you are now with all the current fears and hesitations, but the version of you who has the clinic you want, the reputation you want, the confidence you want, the lifestyle you want, what would they do in this situation?
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then just do that.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds simple, but it really gets you out of your current headspace and into a much more useful one when you think of it like this.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: And number four, record yourself talking about something you know really well, even if you never post it.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: So if video content is the one thing that makes you freeze, the barrier probably isn't creativity or ideas.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's the discomfort of watching and hearing yourself on camera and the fear of being judged if you if and when you do post it.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: The only way through that is exposure.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: So set a timer for two minutes, talk about something you know better than most people, and then watch it back.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: Do it three times this week.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to post any of it, take that pressure off of yourselves, just literally film yourself talking to camera.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what that does is build familiarity with being seen, and that familiarity is what makes the fear smaller.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: If this episode gave you something to think about, I'd love for you to share it with another practitioner who needs to hear it.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want more on the mindset and business side of building something real and aesthetics, make sure you're following the podcast so you don't miss it into this episode.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: See you in the next one.