What do you do as a new entrepreneur with self-critical thoughts that make achieving success hard and keep you feeling stuck?

Terry Boyle McDougall is an Executive & Career Coach and CEO of Terry B. McDougall Coaching. She helps high-achieving professionals remove obstacles that keep them stuck so they can enjoy more success and satisfaction in their lives and careers. Before becoming a coach, Terry was a long-time corporate marketing executive where she led teams, developed strategies, and advised senior leaders to drive business results. 

"I think that all of us have that voice in our head that says, 'Oh, you need to do this or you need to do that and if you don't something bad is going to happen. I call it a gremlin, that voice in the head. A lot of times the gremlin is very harsh with us, right. It's critical. It's perfectionistic. It sometimes catastrophizes about, 'Oh, if you don't do this, you're going to get fired or you're gonna lose your house', or whatever. And it's very important, number one, to recognize that the gremlin is there to try to keep us safe, but the gremlin has no nuances." - Terry McDougall

In this episode with Terry:

• Why Terry decided to become an entrepreneur in 2017 after 30 years of corporate business experience. (3:23) 
• Why Terry made the decision to go from being a marketing consultant to an executive coach. (5:31)
• Why Terry believes coaching and helping others succeed is her higher calling. (8:40)
• How Terry’s family members responded when she shared her entrepreneurial plans. (10:34)
• Advice on how to have conversations about your business or plans with loved ones so that they can understand your vision and be more likely to be supportive. (12:58)
• Why you should think of your inner critic as a gremlin that is trying to protect you. (15:48)
• Why you should think that success doesn’t have to be hard and how to cultivate this mindset. (18:28)
• Why the first step to doing anything new is believing that it’s possible. (22:28)
• How Terry is using skills from her past to build and enhance her current business. (24:47)
• Why it is smart to hire people to help with your business instead of trying to do everything yourself. (26:24)
• The top skills that you should focus on putting time into developing as an entrepreneur. (28:40)
• Something that most high-achievers struggle with that can support you in staying realistic about your progress. (30:05)
• How Terry celebrates her wins as a habit. (32:28)
• How Terry supports people in identifying if they should work towards career goals in their current position or if they should rather start their own business. (33:00)
• How a mastermind group supported Terry in reaching for entrepreneurial success. (36:19)
• The mindset Terry believes gives her the advantage to manage her inner talk and inner critic. (37:13)
• Common fears and challenges entrepreneurs have based on her coaching experience and the research she did for her best-selling book. (39:11)
• Why you shouldn't compare yourself to very successful entrepreneurs you see in the media (and should always take care to manage your taxes). (40:42)

Full show notes, the transcript, resources, and how you can connect with Terry, can be found here: https://www.startingadvantage.com/

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