Welcome to the 12th muse on the Introvert Biz Growth podcast, the show where I talk to introverts who grow their business and make a difference.

I’m Sarah Santacroce, your host. If you’re new here, then I want you to know that this is not the usual format of my regular episodes.

I post a new show every other Friday, and it’s always a conversation with a fellow introverted entrepreneur who uses his or her introverted superpowers to make a difference.

These shows are edited by Tim, my professional podcast editors who also creates amazing shownotes pages.

But today’s episode is a muse, unedited, raw content. No intro music. No bells and whistles.

I share these muses to make you think, to inspire you, to break the rules and to eventually invite you to the Gentle Business Revolution, when it’s ready.

And it’s almost ready. Tune in for the Muse in 2 weeks when I’m revealing what I’ve been working on all these months and open an invitation to the Gentle Business Alliance.

But today I want to talk about fear. Fear that’s holding us back. Fear of rejection.

We all have it. It’s just that some of us embrace the fear and do things anyways, and others are held hostage by the fear.

As conscious entrepreneurs, we truly care about our contributions to the world. So if people don’t like what we share, it strongly affects us - more than others.

Me included. In the AF Marketing program I included an exercise that digs deep into our fear of rejection, as I think it started way before we became entrepreneurs. And I’d like to share that with you today:

If we want to clear the blocks around marketing and fear of rejection, we have to go back to the root. We have to go inward.

We have to look at our own personal story with rejection. So let me share that exercise with you and the questions btw are inspired by Lauren Sapala’s book Firefly Magic, a book that I highly recommend.

I’ll answer the questions from my perspective to serve as an example.

1. What are you most afraid of when being rejected? not being lovable

1. Can you relate the above fears to any memories in your childhood or youth?

Yes, growing up with an emotionally very distant dad. All my life I fought for his approval, his love. And it was holding me back for many years. Until I was able to let it go and forgive him.

1. Did these early rejections trigger some copying strategies that you are still using today? Like not trying out of fear of being rejected?

Yes, pretending that I didn’t care. Or fighting harder to prove something to him. Doing more instead of being more.

I was dealing with this just recently as I was promoting my LinkedIn Social Serving Method course. Sign ups were not coming in and I felt that fear of rejection very deeply. I was ready to give up and just stick my head in the sand. Nobody likes what I’m doing. People are not ready for this different approach. So I’m just going to shut up and not talk about it anymore.

But then I realized that this is about way more than the number of participants for me. This is about the serving mindset, about coming from abundance instead of scarcity, this is about being more gentle in business.

So I took all my courage and continued to share about it. Showing up because it’s important to me, it’s aligned with my values. But at the same time I surrendered and accepted that a small group will be perfect. And I ended up with a small group of exactly my kind of people. People who get it.

And I’m so happy I did.

In order to make a difference you need to put yourself out there – with vulnerability. And the more people you reach, the more rejections you will get. It’s the law of the universe.

Thanks for listening !

Thanks so much for listening to this muse. I hope this resonated with you. If you have any friends who might appreciate today’s muse, why not share it with them.

Tune in for the Muse in 2 weeks when I’m revealing what I’ve been working on all these months and open an invitation to the Gentle Business Alliance.

And of course there’s next week’s interview as well.

Wishing you a wonderful week