About the Episode

“She believed she could, so she did,” I used to love and live by this quote, or at least I used to try and live by. I used to believe that this was who I was meant to be.

I was faking it till I made it. I was pretending because I desperately wanted to believe in myself. But in reality, this just created trauma for me as a business owner, and I quickly suffered from comparisonitis and a loss of direction.

So instead, I decided to do business how I wanted to do it. I believed I could, but I didn’t have to – I didn’t have to do what bro marketing and business coaches were telling me. This is when Entrepreneurial Outlaws was born.

I’m breaking down this saying and where we can go from here on this last episode in our special Mindset Myth series. Enjoy!

Topics discussed in episode #70

Topics Discussed:

  • What to do when you struggle with your relationship with your inner critic 
  • The lessons Melanie learned in her first post-pandemic concert and how it relates to our businesses 
  • The moment Melanie knew she could no longer fake it until she made it and broke up with the idea of “she believed she could so she did”
  • Knowing that there’s a place for you in the online space, that you can make decisions based on what you need
  • Remembering that just because you can doesn’t mean you have to and trusting your intuition 
  • What’s coming up on next week’s guest episode with Ali Knight

Resources:

Connect with Melanie here:

Transcription:

*This is a raw and unedited transcript.

Melanie Knights (00:04):

She believed she could. So she did, I used to love and live by this quote, or at least I used to try and live by. I used to believe that this was who I was meant to be. I was faking it till I made it. I was pretending because I desperately wanted to believe in myself. When I started my business in 20 15, 20 16, took it seriously. I didn't really lies that other people's inner critics may not be as loud as mine. When I first read that my inner critic may be louder than other people's. And maybe I do struggle with my relationship with her. And perhaps she does disrupt my daily life, which meant my business More than others. At the moment, I realized that a I was entirely normal and B it was absolutely okay that this was happening, but there were ways I could heal.

Melanie Knights (01:28):

That was when I started to believe everything before that was very much faking it till I made it. When I think back to those first few years of business, it makes me really sad because we've talked about it before here on the show. How so much of my trauma, like not just my beliefs, but actual trauma things that have I've experienced over the years. Things that my business coaches had. Absolutely no, right in discussing with me as they were not trauma informed coaches, they had no right in saying the things that they said to me And yet they did. And they believed that they were helping me. And what I started to realize as I left the online business bubble Is that they were faking it too. They were faking their belief. They were faking their care. They were their empathy. And that I really was just number. I was just that $500 in their bank account every month.

Melanie Knights (02:40):

And that's really hard. It's really hard. When you realize that a relationship that you believed in someone who, at some point, you deeply trusted with your business, with your fears, with your struggles that you confided in, you cried with them, you shared some of your deepest fears and that they weren't really trying to help you. And that's really, really scary. And it's really hard. And the reason I'm sharing this with you is because this is why we are here. This is why I do this. It's why I record this show. And it's why I even had the desire to speak up about the impact bro marketing and the toxic business culture has on us.

Melanie Knights (03:36):

And there are so many myths and there are so many quotes and ways of work that we have been told are the ideal. They're that, that's it, that's the version of success. That's what we should all be striving for. And I hope by now, you and I both know that there are many, many, many ways of doing things, many ways of working, but, and all of them work for us. Everything works. It just doesn't all work for us. And I feel like that's more true than ever at this point in time, we are all starting to experience past parts of our life, right? Pre pandemic areas of our lives. With new, with new perspective, I shared with you that I had recently been to my fast live music in just over two years. So the beginning of March, I went to London for a few days.

Melanie Knights (04:44):

I went to a four day music festival. I have had my, these tickets it since 2019, it got canceled right at the last minute, during the first pandemic, during the first pandemic, during the first lockdown. And I was really nervous, really nervous to go, but I knew that I wanted to experience live music, and I wanted to see what it was like. I wanted to see what was gonna happen. And what I can tell you is that there were parts. It, I loved first event was a small intimate event songwriter event. I had only been to that once before. And actually when I sat there in 2019, that was the moment I decided I wanted to start learning guitar her. So I knew that I was gonna enjoy that. And I did. And that first song I cried, I was really emotional because not only was I introduced to this song writer for the first time who has written some incredible songs of the best music to come outta Nashville in the last decade, he reminded me of it, of my dad.

Melanie Knights (05:55):

And he wrote this song called polyester. So his name is Luke Dick. It is available on YouTube. If you're on my email list, I shared this with you just recently, but this song is called polyester. And just listen to the lyrics, just listen to the lyrics. It's, it's a great kind of fast country song. It's very easy. I'm I I'm practicing it currently on guitar. So it's not a complicated song, but it's just a very beautiful song. And he said that this is very much about his story. This was very much how he grew up. So anyway that song, I cried first life music and just the whole evening was, was really amazing. But the rest of the weekend taught me a lot of lessons. And I realized that I'm, I mean, I wasn't, I didn't realize I was reminded again that I am not the same person that I was two years ago.

Melanie Knights (06:53):

I did not enjoy the crowds. I wanted to enjoy music. And I felt like there were times where I couldn't, and that was not anyone else's fault. Everybody's there to have a good time, but I realized that maybe I'm a small arena or a small concert person now. And I don't experience firm in the same way that I once did. I don't feel like I'm gonna miss out. I don't to see everybody that weekend. And it took me like four or five days to kind of process all of this. I was really overwhelmed by my emotions and how I was feeling and wasn't sure what was going on, but by the end of it, I realized that it's good. Like I'm cool. I'm I'm okay. I'm I'm okay with live music. I felt I, I was, I felt safe in certain situations. I did get a sinus infection.

Melanie Knights (07:44):

I did still get sick, but I felt safe. In most situations. I wore my mask, even if most people didn't and it was great to be back at life music and reason I'm telling you this is because when we think out these mindset myths, when we think about these quote, limiting beliefs, these things that have maybe held us back, I want you to think about the fact that who you are right now in this moment may not be, I mean, you're still the same person, but your beliefs in the things that you were experiencing or struggling with may not be the same as they were a couple of years ago.

Melanie Knights (08:23):

For me, I've always struggled with the concept of gratitude. I don't, I don't feel like I walk around being ungrateful, but I really struggle with writing down a list of things I'm grateful for. I can do it apps. I can tell you what I'm grateful for, but it always feels slightly crunchy for me. It's it feels slightly strange to write down a list of things that seem so obvious, and that could well be a limiting belief. And it's something I can continue to work on at the same time. I've always felt like abundance was so far away. I have been incredibly privileged through my entire life. I can absolutely say that hand on heart. I'm so fortunate to have had so many amazing experiences to have, have a really lovely upbringing, even amongst grief and trauma in my teens, I still had a really lovely life and have a lovely life.

Melanie Knights (09:31):

And I have always had the things I've needed. And I think because of that, part of me felt like I couldn't deserve abundance. You know, there are people out there who need abundance more than I do, which I know is not true. We are all able to have an abundant life, but I feel I spent so much time believing that my business was not growing because I was completely deep in scarcity mindset. And I will absolutely hand on heart say, yes, I terrified of what would happen if I failed. But it was an ego driven feeling. Absolutely was it was ego driven. I was so focused on making things look a rather than just seeing where things went and doing the work and carrying on, I really wanted things to look like they were successful. And I think for a really long time they did. So when I wasn't successful things still looked successful and I felt like such a fraud, which meant that I really then struggled to sell, promote myself because I felt like I was lying.

Melanie Knights (11:11):

And I've shared with you the time that I was trying to shift into business coaching. And I had absolutely no reason to be coaching business owners. I had experience of working or trying to build a business. I had experience of working with other coaches. I had experience of being in the online space, but I had no reason to be coaching other business owners, cuz I didn't have the success that I was trying to coach. And it was funny because at the time I did a heap of market research, I got on that phone. I remember that summer. I spoke to so many people, maybe 15 different people. And we, we were really honest. We had honest conversations, right? No different to what we would have now because when I got on the phone with someone that was who I was and we would have these honest conversations and we were talking about, you know, greats make a few thousand pounds or a few thousand dollars.

Melanie Knights (12:18):

It'd be great to just understand what is the next best thing to do. And I had these conversations repeatedly and when I went back and said to my coach, you know, this is what they want. They just, they just wanna make like an extra thing. They just like to make a thousand dollars a month in their business to just show that they could do the, that. And I was told, no, that's not what they want. That's not really what they want. They wanna make multiple six figures. They want, you know, they want 5,000 a month. They want 10,000 a month. And I was like, but that's not what they're saying. And I don't have any, I shouldn't be teaching that. That's not some, how can I teach that if I'm not doing it? If I haven't done it because how can I coach somebody through it? How can I share a framework? I don't have a framework for that cuz I haven't done it myself. And I was told, well, you shouldn't lie, but you know, it's what they want. And that's one of the moments where I just stopped listening. It was one of the moments where I realized that this was not how I wanted to be as a business owner. I no longer wanted to pretend I no longer wanted to fake it till I made it.

Melanie Knights (13:34):

And it was the moment when I stopped pretending that could I no longer fell in love every time I saw the quote she believed she could. So she did, that was on my desk. It was written on my wall and I, I no longer had a relationship with that quote because what I realized was that Sometimes I'm wrong and sometimes there are where it's not right and it's not the right time and I don't have to do it. And maybe sometimes I believe I can do it, but I'm still not going to, or maybe I will in, in a few years or a few months and accepting that that was okay, Was a huge milestone in my business,

Melanie Knights (14:23):

Accepting that it's okay, that there may not be the right time and accepting that sometimes we can wait because we know in our intuition and our soul, that the right time is coming. I've talked about it before, but I wanted to start our podcast back in 26 and I never did. I got a microphone in, I think in 2017 and it sat on my desk and I used it for Facebook lives and all these different things over the years. But I didn't start my podcast until 2020. And the reason I started the podcast in 2020 was because of all of you, because when I started speaking up on social media about the, in the online space and you all didn't leave me hanging and were like, yeah, we hated too. I was really inspired to keep having these conversations to keep chatting with you in various ways.

Melanie Knights (15:25):

And when I started to think about creating a podcast and actually doing the thing, I realized even in the, in the early days of 2020, when I started thinking about it, I had very different ideas for this podcast. They were not the right thing. I'm so glad I didn't go with those plans. And when entrepreneurial Outlaws came to me, that was it. I knew, I knew that it would allow me to talk to you about content marketing and mindset. And I could talk about country music and I could talk about every single thing my multi passionate heart wants to because being an entrepreneur outlaw means doing this on own terms. If you are a multi passionate business owner, then you can allow yourself to be a multi passionate business owner. And talk about those things. If you want to have a slow business, we can do that too.

Melanie Knights (16:33):

It, you know, no matter your business model, no, what kind of business you run on, whether you're a coach or a service, a product based business, an artist, a designer, or anything else in between. There is a space for you here. You have a seat at this table one day. I really hope we actually all get to sit around a really big table. That would be freaking amazing. But metaphorically speaking, we get, you all get to have a seat at the table because that is the point of being an entrepreneurial outlaw. And this month we've been talking about mindset myths. We've talked about these, these myths that hold us back. These ways of holding us, holding us in scarcity mode, keeping us afraid, telling us that we're gonna miss out all these ways that we have been held back by society, by coaches, by bro marketing.

Melanie Knights (17:37):

I'm not saying that we as individuals are innocent and that we don't sometimes hold ourselves back. Trust me. I get real tired of my sometimes, but I also want us to remember that we can look around in the online space. We can look around and we can make decisions based on what we want. You can make a decision based on what you want. You can make a decision based on what you need. If it's not the right time, you don't have to. She believes she could, but she knew it wasn't the right time. She believed she could, but she was tired and needed a rest. She believed she could. But she still said, no, she believed she could, but she changed her mind. She believed she could, but she would do it later.

Melanie Knights (18:34):

She believed could, but it didn't feel right. She believed she could, but it wasn't what she needed right now. You can still believe in yourself and not do the thing. You don't have to do it just because you believe you can do it. There are plenty of things I know I can do, but I choose not to because it's not the right time for me. It's not the right season for my business. My focus is elsewhere. My attention is elsewhere. My time is elsewhere in April. We're gonna be talking all about seasons of business. I have two episodes planned where we are gonna look at slow and busy seasons of business. And I think these are gonna be really powerful episodes because it is so important for us to recognize where we are at as individuals. And I'm gonna share with you questions. You can ask yourself, I'm gonna share with you ways in which you can recognize the season and really talk and explore about the fact that you are allow to be in your season.

Melanie Knights (19:55):

So yeah, she believed she could, but she didn't have to. And I want you to really hold onto that. I want you to just remember that as you head in to this new month, I want you to just remember that just because you can, it doesn't be, and you have to, and maybe, you know, intuitively there is a gonna be a better time. If you know that, then it's okay. You don't have to do it messy. You don't have to do it scared. You can wait. And when you approach your decisions from a place of what you need right now, and you stand in your values, you can't go wrong. You won't regret it because at the time the decision was based on what you needed.

Melanie Knights (20:49):

And I don't think we can ask for anymore of ourselves. Really. I think if we can meet our needs right now in the way the state of the world is, I think we are doing a great job. Thank you so much for sticking with me for today's episode of entrepreneurial Outlaws, I'm gonna be honest. This was a no notes episode. This was an episode I wanted to talk about. She believed she could. So she did. I wanted to talk about some of the ways we can reframe that. I wanted to remind you that you have so much more power than you give yourself credit for. I have out. Then I give myself credit for, I know that. And I wanted to have a really gentle and, and shorter conversation with you to wrap up this month of March.

Melanie Knights (21:50):

And to really allow you to step into April feeling like you are solid. Like you've got this solid ground beneath you. You're not starting at zero. You have all the experience and all the tools behind you that you need. You have the answers and you can listen to yourself and you can listen to your intuition and you can, you can say no to other people and you can say no to your coach, if it means to. And I know that's scary. And you can say no to me, right? You can say no to me. That's cool too. But I want you to just remember how powerful you are, just in your being of having this business of doing this thing that you do, of helping people and the way you help them or supporting them, encouraging them, whatever it is that you do, you have so much power. And I want you to step into April with that power.

Melanie Knights (22:57):

And I really, really love sitting down and having these conversations with you. I want to thank you so much for sharing your stories with me over the last couple of years. I can't believe there were already episode 70 years wild to me. And I actually wanted to share with you guys a recent review that came through because I, I just, I was like, oh, it just means so much to me. So it came through just recently in March and it says, I listen to a lot of small business podcasts and this is one of the best it is empowering, authentic kind and inspiring. I feel motivated and supported by each episode. And I am so grateful this podcast exists. So Joe, thank you so much for sharing that review on apple podcasts. I so freaking appreciate that. I appreciate you. I appreciate you for listening for your words. Like I sent it to my podcast manager and said, my job is done. And then I was like, just kidding. I'm recording an episode today. Don't worry.

Melanie Knights (24:05):

But I, I read every review obviously and I share them and I share them with my team because every time I hear a story or see your, your feedback or comments, even on Instagram, it just, it reminds me of why we do this. And I so appreciate it. So if you can find it in your time and your heart today to leave us a review, you can review on you can review on apple podcasts. You can review on Spotify now as well. So if you are a Spotify listener, you can review over there. And if you can take just a few minutes to leave a phone, five star review I would greatly appreciate it deeply. Appreciate it. And I will definitely be sharing these more and more on the podcast as we head into the coming months. And if you want to take a screenshot that you're listening today and share it on Instagram stories, tag me, let your and peers know that you're listening because the more we can spread the word about entrepreneurial Outlaws, the more Outlaws we can welcome into this community, the more of an impact we can make, the more paths we can pave for leaders that we wish we had.

Melanie Knights (25:21):

And the more we can make changes in this space. So thank you again. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for showing up and I appreciate you so so much. Next week, we have a guest episode. I am super excited because we are welcoming Ali Knight to the show and we had a freak, amazing conversation all about standing in your truth. So stay tuned for next week's episode is a slightly longer episode, of course, because two Aquarius sitting down and sharing that is what you can expect, but it is an incredible conversation. So make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode and I will see you next week until next time Outlaws.