You find real joy in commune with others. It’s where you feel your best and find yourself most at home. Plus, it’s one of the ways you enjoy helping others.

Whether it’s through 1:1 work, speaking from the stage or in your informal mastermind group, you’re always giving to others. You naturally make others feel valued, interesting and important. Plus it’s so organic for you to forge connections between people you know to help foster their relationships. 

But you often give more than you get, or sacrifice your own needs in the process of helping others. This isn’t because the people around you don’t want to offer their ideas, support or encouragement — they want to and often do.

The challenge is that you find it difficult to put up boundaries and say no. When someone asks for help, you feel called to step up. The idea of choosing yourself first feels uncomfortable at best, often leaving you feeling guilty.

The truth is it feels safe to hide in those moments of connection with others, where you feel comfortable and in your element. Stepping outside that comfort zone to step into the solo work that you need to build your business is what you’re hiding from.

You don’t need to stop collaborating, connecting or supporting others. That’s your superpower. But it’s not sustainable for you or your business if you don’t create some boundaries to put yourself first when it’s needed.

Start looking for those moments to say ‘no’ and put yourself first. Sometimes, it can be easier to start by saying ‘not right now’. That gives you the opportunity to work on you, then go into your zone of genius.

Humans are born wired for connection, and you are no different. Social connection is a powerful desire, and an even more powerful tool — for change, growth and developing the kind of meaning you seek in your life.

While you don’t want to be in socializing mode 24/7, you do crave that regular ritual of connection and bond-building. Without that essential ceremony of connection, you find yourself feeling lonely and isolated.

Those feelings of isolation can grow quickly if left unchecked. And they lead to some nasty patterns that diminish your productivity as you begin to seek out connections of any kind, rather than the soul-nourishing experience it is for you. 

Not only can this negatively impact your mental health, but you’ll find yourself deferring the deep mindset and growth work that both you and your business need from you.

You thrive when you’re spending time creating relationships, cultivating bonds, and supporting others in their growth. For you, connection is a form of self-care.

Because you feel comfortable showing up authentically as yourself, it’s easy to see that people choose to work with you, befriend you and stay in touch with you because they like you.

In fact, by focusing on relationships first, it’s been easy to spend time getting to know people that eventually turn into your clients or customers. It feels like a natural and ethical way to do business, and successful businesses are built on good relationships.

But sustainable businesses are built through scale. And a 1:1 approach is very difficult to grow. You may already be feeling hindered if you’re looking to grow, because it seems like some of your best attributes are working against you.

You go above and beyond for your network and colleagues. Your clients rave about working with you, and you get a lot of business from word of mouth referrals. But it can be difficult to translate your natural networking style to online marketing, where you’re ‘supposed to talk about yourself’

It can feel icky and inauthentic to start marketing yourself. You don’t resonate with the perfectly crafted posts and highly curated Instagram feeds, so you’re not about to replicate it.

But, there is a way to market yourself at scale and still show up authentically. And given how likeable and relationship-focused you are when you are networking, you can do the same in your marketing.

You’ll easily build KLT (know, like & trust) by showing up as yourself and taking a definite interest in the people you most want to help. Continue to forge relationships first by helping them where they are now.