I Built My Business By Letting Go Of Who I Used To Be
Why You're Enslaved To Your Old Identity, And How It's Destroying Your Business?
How to Stop Living in the Past for Scaling Your Business
Your business is stuck because you are.
I see it constantly with ambitious entrepreneurs who have all the skills, knowledge, and capability to build something extraordinary, yet they remain trapped in cycles of comparison, perfectionism, and playing small. They spend hours scrolling through content trying to find the missing piece, reading newsletters hoping for the breakthrough strategy, watching other coaches wondering what they have that they don't.
The missing piece isn't out there. It's inside you, buried under layers of past conditioning that taught you to stay small, seek permission, and hide your authentic voice behind what already exists.
Your past only has the power you give it. Your business will only grow as much as you're willing to grow beyond who you used to be.
The Business-Killing Romance with Yesterday
When you spend time ruminating about your past business decisions, client interactions, or marketing attempts, you're not learning from experience. You're stealing energy from your future success. Every minute spent analyzing what already happened is a minute not spent creating what could happen next.
When you keep recalling past actions to judge whether you reacted correctly in business situations, you create a mental prison where you're simultaneously the prosecutor, defendant, and judge. This internal courtroom never reaches a verdict because the past cannot be retried, yet you keep presenting the same evidence hoping for a different outcome.
When you regret past business experiences, you transform valuable data into emotional quicksand. Every failed launch becomes evidence that you can't succeed. Every difficult client becomes proof that you're not cut out for this. Every marketing mistake becomes confirmation that you should have stayed safe.
I had a client who spent eighteen months analyzing a product launch that didn't meet her expectations. She dissected every email, every social media post, every sales conversation. Those eighteen months could have been used to create and launch three new offers, but instead she remained paralyzed by analysis of something that couldn't be changed. Her business stayed exactly where it was while her competitors moved forward.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Recognize Your Excuses Are Protection Mechanisms
"I won't start a business, it's too late."
"I can't grow on social media, it was easier before."
"I can't sell effectively now, my past clients were better."
These aren't factual assessments. They're sophisticated protection mechanisms designed to keep you safe from the vulnerability of trying and potentially failing.
Using the past as an excuse is your nervous system's way of avoiding the discomfort of growth. It sounds reasonable, feels justified, and protects you from criticism. But it also protects you from success.
The truth about "it's too late" is that it's never about timing. It's about readiness to be seen, heard, and potentially criticized. There are people starting successful businesses at every age, in every market, at every stage of economic uncertainty. The only thing that makes it "too late" is your decision to let your past define your future possibilities.
The truth about "it was easier before" is that everything feels easier in retrospect because you're remembering the result, not the process. You've forgotten the confusion, the learning curve, the trial and error that every successful person went through. Your brain has compressed years of gradual progress into a highlight reel that looks effortless compared to your current struggles.
How to grow a coaching business requires understanding that your "better" past clients weren't actually better. You were different. You were hungrier, more grateful, less discerning. You said yes to everyone and everything because you didn't believe you deserved to be selective. Those clients seem better now because you've forgotten the difficult moments, the boundary violations, the energy drain that came with accepting everyone.
Your current standards aren't the problem. Your selective memory is. Your business doesn't need you to lower your standards back to where they were. It needs you to own your evolved standards and find clients who meet them.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Stop Glamorizing Your Past Identity
You glamorize your past business identity because it feels safer than stepping into your current one. Past you was smaller, less threatening, more acceptable. Current you has opinions, standards, and a voice that might be criticized. Past you was easier to love because she asked for less.
Your past identity served you perfectly for that stage of your business journey. She was optimistic, eager to please, grateful for any opportunity. Those weren't character flaws. They were necessary qualities that got you started. But they're not the qualities that will scale your business.
Your current audience doesn't want your past version. They want your evolved version. They want your refined perspective, your deeper expertise, your stronger boundaries. When you keep showing up as who you used to be instead of who you are now, you're giving them a discount version of what they actually need.
I spent two years trying to recreate the energy of my early business days, wondering why my content felt flat and my offers weren't resonating. I was trying to be enthusiastic beginner me instead of experienced expert me. My audience could sense the disconnect. They weren't following me for my past energy. They were following me for my current wisdom.
How to grow a coaching business means understanding that your audience is attracted to your growth trajectory, not your starting point. They want to see where you're going, not where you've been. They want to invest in your future potential, not your past performance.
Your past business identity was perfect for attracting past clients, past income, past impact. Your current business identity is what will attract current opportunities. You cannot create genius connections with your audience if you're still trying to be someone you've outgrown.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Create Original Content Instead of Recreating What Works
I can see it in your content when you recreate posts from your favorite coaches or talk about topics that everyone discusses without adding your unique perspective. You're hiding your future self behind what already exists, playing it safe by staying within the boundaries of what's already been proven to work.
This is how staying in the past shows up in your business. You create content that sounds like everyone else because you're afraid your original thoughts aren't valuable enough. You develop offers that mirror what's already successful because you're afraid your unique approach isn't marketable enough. You position yourself like established coaches because you're afraid your authentic voice isn't interesting enough.
When you understand that you need to create a business aligned with yourself, not for pleasing the algorithm, your audience, or your family, everything changes. You stop trying to be the coach you think people want and start being the coach you actually are. You stop creating content you think will get engagement and start creating content that reflects your genuine expertise.
How to grow a coaching business requires you to create something your future self needs. It's the content you're looking for when you scroll for hours on social platforms or read countless newsletters but never quite find. It's the offer that solves the problem you wish someone would solve. It's the community you wish existed but doesn't yet.
You know what you need to do to shift yourself and create the business you actually want. You need to stop hiding behind other people's proven formulas and start trusting your own proven experience. You need to build something so specifically you that people say "you read my mind" because you're speaking directly to the part of them that resonates with the part of you that you're finally willing to share.
The protection mechanism of recreating what already works is just an expression of what you learned early: be small, don't stand out, don't say anything that might be criticized. When you were younger, every time you expressed an original thought loudly, someone told you to be quiet. Now you unconsciously recreate that dynamic by only saying what's already been said, only offering what's already been offered.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Stop Being a Slave to Your Old Identity
You're enslaved to your past version because you think you don't deserve more than what you had then. You think being the small, agreeable version of yourself will earn you love, validation, and acceptance. You think playing it safe will protect you from criticism and rejection.
In reality, this past identity keeps you stuck in the same position year after year. We're in the middle of the year right now, and you can see that your projects haven't moved because you're afraid to outgrow the person you used to be. You're afraid to become someone who might be too much, too successful, too visible.
How to grow a coaching business means you have to be willing to become someone your past self wouldn't recognize. You have to develop the capacity to handle success, visibility, and criticism. You have to grow into someone who can hold bigger dreams, serve more people, and charge premium prices without apologizing.
You see other coaches who have everything you want, and instead of using that as evidence of what's possible, you use it as evidence of what's not available to you. You make their success mean something about your limitations instead of something about your potential.
This is past-identity thinking. Past you wasn't capable of what they're doing, so current you assumes she's not capable either. But current you has resources, knowledge, experience, and wisdom that past you didn't have. Current you is capable of things past you couldn't even imagine.
The little girl identity that learned to stay small and seek approval is not equipped to build a scaling business. She doesn't have the boundaries to say no to wrong-fit clients. She doesn't have the confidence to charge what her expertise is worth. She doesn't have the visibility tolerance to market herself effectively.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Accept Your Present Circumstances as Your Starting Point
When you romanticize your past, you create a lie that your current circumstances are somehow wrong or insufficient. You compare where you are now to where you were then, forgetting that where you were then was also imperfect, also challenging, also a work in progress.
Your present circumstances aren't a punishment or a step backward. They're your starting point for what comes next. Every successful business owner has looked at their current reality and decided to build something better from exactly where they are, not from where they wish they were.
How to grow a coaching business requires you to stop waiting for your circumstances to match your past comfort level and start building from your current wisdom level. Your present challenges are not evidence that you're going backward. They're evidence that you're ready for bigger problems, more sophisticated solutions, higher-level thinking.
You need to change the way you speak about your present situation. Stop saying "the past was better" and start saying "the present is preparing me for something bigger." Stop saying "I used to be more successful" and start saying "I'm building towards greater success." Stop saying "things were easier then" and start saying "I'm capable of handling more complexity now."
Start romanticizing your present and your future instead of your past. Fall in love with your current growth process instead of your past comfort zone. Get excited about who you're becoming instead of nostalgic about who you used to be.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Understand That Your Unique Perspective Is Your Competitive Advantage
You think what you want to share already exists, but your unique point of view doesn't. Your specific combination of experiences, insights, and perspectives has never existed before and will never exist again. Your job isn't to say something that's never been said. Your job is to say something that's never been said by you.
Every topic has been covered. Every problem has been addressed. Every solution has been offered. But not by you, with your specific background, your unique insights, your particular way of seeing and solving problems. Your perspective is your competitive advantage, but only if you're willing to share it.
How to grow a coaching business means you have to stop hiding behind other people's ideas and start trusting your own. You have to stop recreating what's already been created and start creating what only you can create. You have to stop being afraid that your thoughts aren't original enough and start being afraid that you'll never share them.
The protection mechanism of staying small comes from early conditioning that taught you to be quiet when you had something to say. You learned that having original thoughts was dangerous, that standing out was risky, that being different was wrong. Now you unconsciously recreate that safety by only saying what others have already said.
But your business doesn't need another copy of what already exists. The market doesn't need another version of someone else's approach. Your ideal clients don't need you to sound like everyone else. They need you to sound like you.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Build for Your Future Self, Not Your Past Comfort
Your future self needs you to create the business that doesn't exist yet, not recreate the business that used to work. She needs you to develop new skills, not rely on old ones. She needs you to solve bigger problems, not repeat familiar solutions.
When you create offers based on what worked in the past, you're building for who you used to be and who your clients used to be. But both of you have evolved. Your clients have new problems that require new solutions. You have new insights that enable new approaches.
How to grow a coaching business for your future self means you have to be willing to create things that feel scary, uncertain, and unfamiliar. You have to be willing to develop new capabilities instead of relying on existing ones. You have to be willing to serve clients at a level you haven't served before.
Your future business will require you to be someone you've never been before. It will require you to have conversations you've never had, make offers you've never made, take risks you've never taken. You cannot build a future business with a past identity.
Start making decisions from your future self instead of your past self. Ask yourself: "What would the version of me who has the business I want do in this situation?" Then do that, even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you're not sure you're ready, even if your past self would have chosen differently.
How to Stop Living in the Past: Create the Community and Content You Wish Existed
You will have the community you deserve when you create the community you wish existed. You will attract the clients you want when you become the coach you needed. You will build the business you dream about when you stop trying to recreate someone else's business and start creating your own.
How to grow a coaching business means you have to be willing to pioneer something new instead of perfecting something old. You have to be willing to be the first person to solve a problem in your particular way instead of the hundredth person to solve it in someone else's way.
You know what's missing in your industry. You know what gaps exist in the market. You know what solutions you wish someone would create. Instead of waiting for someone else to create them, become the person who does.
Stop consuming endless content looking for the answer and start creating the content that contains your answers. Stop searching for the perfect coach to learn from and start becoming the coach others want to learn from. Stop waiting for someone to build the community you want and start building it yourself.
Your business will be so specific to who you are and what you believe that people will feel like you're reading their minds. Not because you're saying what everyone else is saying, but because you're saying what only you can say in the way only you can say it.
Your Past Was Preparation, Your Present Is Creation
Your past business experiences weren't your peak performance. They were your training ground. Every client you've worked with, every offer you've created, every mistake you've made has prepared you for the business you're ready to build now.
Stop glamourizing what was and start creating what could be. Your past was meaningful and necessary, but it was also incomplete. You know more now than you knew then. You're capable of more now than you were then. You're ready for more now than you were then.
Your business doesn't need you to recreate past success. It needs you to create future success. It needs you to use everything you've learned to build something that has never existed before. It needs you to stop being a student of other people's methods and start being a teacher of your own.
How to grow a coaching business requires you to stop living in the past and start building in the present for your future. It requires you to stop hiding behind what's already been proven and start proving what's possible for you.
Your past was your prologue. Your present is your story. Your future is your choice.
The only power your past has over your business is the power you keep giving it. Take that power back. Use it to build the business that only you can build, serve the clients that only you can serve, and create the impact that only you can create.
Your business is waiting for you to stop looking backward and start building forward. Your clients are waiting for you to stop hiding and start helping. Your future is waiting for you to stop preparing and start performing.
Stop living in the past. Start scaling your future.
See you soon
XOXO
