The 9-to-5 Habit That's Secretly Stalling Your Business {5.06.26}

There's a version of "doing the research" that's actually just postponing a decision you already know you need to make.

In this episode, Jen shares the moment in her own business when she realized she wasn't waiting for more information — she was waiting for someone outside of herself to confirm what she already knew. 

And the longer no one did, the more she doubted it.

She unpacks why this pattern is so common for women entrepreneurs, how the habits of an employee mindset follow us into business ownership, and why results — even the ones that don't go as planned — are just data, not proof that you can't be trusted.

If you've been sitting on a decision longer than feels reasonable, this episode is worth your time.

This week's question: Are you waiting for more information, or are you waiting for permission?

Ready to stop waiting and start moving? The Momentum Room is built for exactly this. Calm accountability, no angst, and a community of women done letting hesitation run the show. Learn more at www.jenlaffin.com/tmr.

Episode 44

Air Date: 5/06/26

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome back to the Goal Getter Guide podcast, my friend. I am Jen Laffin, and I want to talk to you today about self-trust. And I'm going to start it out with a little bit of a story of how I learned how to trust myself, because I am truly walking the talk. I am living through every single thing that I am teaching you on this podcast, and I think it's important to share those moments with you. So I want to talk to you about how I was about a few years, I think maybe three or four years into building my business, and I had a decision that I needed to make, and I had been avoiding making this decision for a really long time. I was trying to decide if I should narrow down my business focus from general goal getters, who I loved helping, even though that niche felt a little bit vague to me because it could apply to a whole bunch of people... to narrowing down to midlife women entrepreneurs who were avoiding their big goals. And this is a group that I could personally completely relate to and knew that I could help because I had already traveled that road. I was worried that I had spent so much time building an audience of goal getters that shifting to this more specific audience would leave all of my hard work behind, and that basically I would be starting over. I told myself that I was waiting on making this decision because I needed more information, that I wasn't 100% sure that this was the direction I wanted to go yet. But if I'm being honest, that really wasn't it. I was waiting for something outside of me to confirm the decision that I was about to make, to tell me that choosing to niche down was the magic key that I had been looking for, to give me a go-ahead. And the longer that no one did, the more I convinced myself that maybe this wasn't really that great of an idea after all. So I kept focusing on all the goal getters like I had been doing, and for a while, everything looked fine from the outside. But inside, something was off. My enthusiasm for my work took a nosedive, and it was to the point that I actually began avoiding it altogether. My business was stuck- And it was not growing. And then one morning, I had a talk with myself. I could either take a chance on myself and make the darn decision and start focusing on my ideal client, or I could change my business plan and drastically adjust my expectations. And if I'm really being honest here, I'd also have to adjust my level of happiness. I'm happy to say that I chose to take that chance, and I re-niched. And while it was super scary and it felt like people were going to come out of the woodwork and ask me what the heck I was doing, they didn't. But it taught me something really, really important. Self-trust is an absolute must if I was going to do big things with my business. And this is unlike when I was an employee, because now no one was going to be coming around to give me approval. That was my own job. When I was an employee, I had people there that naturally confirmed what I was doing was a good idea or redirected me if they thought it wasn't. And I have had some version of this conversation with many women entrepreneurs since making that decision myself. The details are always a little bit different. It could be an offer, it could be a client, a niche, the direction they keep almost going in, but the shape is usually very consistent. They knew what they needed to do, they just didn't trust it, and as a result, they were stuck. And when I dig into this with clients, we almost always end up in the same place, and it's not a place that you might expect. It's the habits of an employee mindset that followed them into entrepreneurship. Because like I said, in an employee role, not trusting your own judgment is often the correct instinct. You defer to your manager, and you wait for approval. You run things up the chain before you act. That's just how most organizations are structured, and navigating them well and keeping your job requires learning to do exactly that. But those habits don't automatically switch off when you start a business. And in an entrepreneurial context, the same thing that once protected you when you were someone else's employee Now keeps you from making decisions that only you can make. When you're an entrepreneur, there is really no chain to run things up. There's no approval coming, there's no one to tell you if something is a good idea, or to take the fall if it doesn't work out. And quite honestly, that's also what we're looking for sometimes, right? And waiting for this outside reassurance, whether it's from a mentor or a colleague or even a peer who's a few steps ahead, this is one of the most common ways that I've seen talented women business owners stall out without fully realizing what exactly is happening. They think they're being careful or thorough, but at some point, research stops being due diligence, and it starts being a way to postpone standing behind your own decisions, and realizing this matters more than you know. Now, one of the things that I say to clients a lot, especially when they're afraid of making the wrong move, I tell them, "Results are just data." We treat decisions like they're permanent, even though, if we're being honest, most of them aren't. We frame not getting the results we hope for as a sign that we can't make the right decisions rather than as information gathering. We fear making a mistake because mistakes were the thing that could have once gotten us in a lot of trouble and possibly even fired, right? And so we wait because waiting feels safer. But I've noticed something really, really important. The women who move even when they're not fully certain and even when they can't guarantee an outcome, they are the ones that figure things out faster than the ones who keep waiting for certainty to arrive first. When you try something and it doesn't work the way you expected, it is not a mistake. It's exactly how you learn what works. The people who build businesses that last are not the ones who always knew the right answer. They're the ones who are willing to try something, trust themselves, and find out. Waiting doesn't reduce your risk, and in most cases, it just delays your learning and costs you very crucial time that you can't get back Now, I want to be clear that this is not a case for recklessness. There are decisions that genuinely need more time and more information before they're ready to act on, and that kind of discernment is worth taking your time with and honoring. But most of the women I work with, they are not struggling with discernment at this level. They're struggling with the courage to act on what they already know and what they already hold as their own truth. I had a client recently who had been sitting on a pricing change for four months. She knew her rates needed to go up, but every time she got close to making it official, she'd find one more reason to wait. There was always one more person to ask, one more thing to research, one more month to see how things shook out. And when we finally looked at it together, there was nothing new she needed to know. The information had been there all along. What she was actually waiting for was someone to tell her that she was headed in the right direction. And when I'm in that loop myself, the question that I come back to is really, really simple, and you can use it, too. Here it is. What does my gut tell me? And then I get quiet, and I listen to my inner knowing. I pick up my pen, I journal a little bit, and then I decide because my intuition is usually the most honest data point I have, and I'm willing to bet that yours is, too. Yet it's almost always the one we talk ourselves out of because we believe that if a decision doesn't get the seal of approval from someone else, it's just too risky. This is our employee mindset hanging on for too long. Trusting yourself does not mean that you're always right and that everything will turn out as planned. I wish it did, but it doesn't. It means that you're willing to let your own judgment be a large part of your evidence, and you go from there. The track record you're looking for, the one that would make you feel more confident and more certain or more ready, that only gets built by deciding and taking action. Waiting is what keeps you stalled. So if there's a decision you've been sitting with longer than you'd like, I invite you to get honest about what you're actually waiting for. Are you waiting for more information or for permission to arrive from the outside? Because if it's the latter, I'd like to gently point out to you that you don't need it. Somewhere underneath all the research and the second-guessing, you probably already know which way you're leaning. You just have to trust yourself enough to know that you will be able to handle the results whatever they are. Self-trust, my friends, is not a feeling that arrives before you take action. It's something that gets built in the moments when you decide to take your own knowing seriously and then do something with it. And if this is the season where you're ready to stop waiting and start moving, I want to remind you that The Momentum Room is that space that's built specifically for that work. Inside, you're going to find that calm accountability, that clarity that you're looking for, and a community of women who are done letting hesitation run the show. If this sounds like something you need, your future self needs you to act on it. Find out more on my website at jenlaffin.com/tmr or find the link in the show notes. All right, my friends, that is it for this week. I really, really hope that you will lean into your self-trust more thank you so much for listening again this week. I will see you right back here again next week. Have a great week.