E119: Stop Building from Fear: Rewrite the Stories That Keep You Small

What if the stories you’ve been carrying are the very thing holding your business back?

Entrepreneurship promises freedom, fulfillment, and financial ease—but too often, past experiences create stories that shape how we build today. Stories about money that make us underprice. Stories about confidence that keep us second-guessing. Stories about trust that close us off. Stories about vision that dull our dreams. And stories about belief that whisper doubt when conviction is needed most.

In this episode of the Kitchen Table Dreams Podcast, I walk you through five stories every entrepreneur must rewrite—and the practical steps to shift them. You’ll learn how to:

• Stop underpricing and step into financial clarity.
• Turn comparison and rejection into confidence and micro-courage.
• Rebuild trust with yourself and set boundaries that protect your energy.
• Reignite your vision and give yourself permission to dream boldly again.
• Craft new beliefs that anchor you in alignment, ease, and authority.

Old stories don’t have to define your future. Every story can be rewritten. This episode will help you build not from fear, but from power, clarity, and alignment.

✨ Ready to start rewriting your story? Join the Kitchen Table Dreams newsletter here: https://kimberlyihouston.com/email

Transcript

Kimberly Houston (00:00) Entrepreneurship promises freedom, fulfillment, and financial ease. But what if the stories you're carrying from the past about money, confidence, trust, vision, or even your own belief are shaping how you build today? Too many entrepreneurs are growing businesses on old stories that keep them small. And here's the truth. You can rewrite these stories. So today we're going to talk about five stories that might be quietly holding your business back and how to start rewriting them so that you can grow from power, not pain. So number one, let's talk about the financial story. You've taken hits maybe debt or losses still whisper every time you make an investment you under price not because you're not valuable but because rejection made you second-guess. That's the financial story that's running in the background. What I want to do is offer you some solutions on how you can make this better. So first, rewrite your steps. Number one, audit your numbers weekly. Clarity creates calm. Two, reframe losses as tuition for the next lesson. So what was the price of tuition that I paid to learn this lesson? Three, price from transformation, not from fear. So whenever we're setting our prices, what is a transformation that you are providing to your client? A lot of times the gurus are telling you to find a solution, find a problem that your audience has and then find a solution. Well, once you find the solution, what's the transformation that you're offering them? Just take it a step further. And then build a small financial cushion. to shift from survival mode into strategy. So once the money story is clearer, then your confidence story is usually the one that creeps in next. So let's talk about what that looks like. As someone who has been coaching people for years, one of the things I've experienced, one of the things that I walk people through all the time is the no, the no. So that one client who told you no causes you to compare yourself to other people, particularly if they went with your competitor instead of going with you, right? So the comparison will start to drain you. Imposter syndrome is going to creep in. even when your results prove that you're qualified, like you have coached other people, you've helped other people, you've serviced other people. and you've had great success with it, that no is still lingering in the back of your mind, right? And so it will shake your confidence. And if the confidence story is whispering that you don't belong at a table that you've already earned a seat at, and in some cases that you don't belong at a table that you built with your own two hands, I want to help you out with this, all right? So here's how you're going to rewrite these stories. that are coming up for you. Number one, keep a receipt file. So this could be a gratitude jar, but it's a jar that's full of your wins. It's full of testimonials. It's full of milestones. Something that's going to help you tap back into the energy of, no, no, no, no. This is not a gag, and this is what I do, right? Practice daily micro-courage. So take one bold action a day. Do something that scares you and do what afraid. And then turn comparison into curiosity. So instead of how do I measure up to these people? How can I beat my competition? I want you to reframe that in your mind and ask yourself, what can I learn? Like always be curious. What can I learn? Is your competition doing something that's working? I don't want you to copy them, but you can 100 % mirror it, right? Like if they have a funnel or if they have some sort of promo that's working and it makes dollars and cents. No, not everything people are doing that looks like it's working makes dollars and cents. But if it's making dollars and cents, then I don't see a reason why you cannot elevate your experience with your clients in order to be able to take your rightful place at the top. But even if you feel confident, trust can get in the way, right? So trust stories can keep you guarded, cautious, and closed off. And this is one that I could probably write an entire book on or just take you down a rabbit hole with me because it is something that I have dealt with in therapy, something I have dealt with in every relationship I've ever been in. And it's one of those things that I don't know that it ever goes away. You just have to learn new ways of dealing with it. Right. So let me explain what this can kind of look like for you as an entrepreneur. You've been burned before bad partnerships. whether that is in your business or in your personal life. Draining clients, you know how you discounted something or you ran a promo just so you could pay that bill and you ended up with clients who want everything and they've really paid you nothing. dealing with family that didn't back your vision, that falls under the trust story, right? Where you won't let anyone in, where you build this wall up. And it's very much so, I got to move in silence. I can do bad all by myself. You can do bad all by yourself. You could also build in the light. You don't have to build in silence. One of the things that I have learned, particularly over the last five years as an entrepreneur, is that building in silence is a trauma response. It is definitely one of the most viral articles I've ever written. But the psychology backs it up. moving in silence is a trauma response because you think somebody is going to take your stuff. You feel like you cannot talk about whatever it is you want to do because people aren't going to support it. And the reality of that is Not trusting yourself, not trusting what you know to be true on the inside as an entrepreneur is showing up and you saying that you got to move in silence because you don't want other people to talk about you. But if you 100 % trust yourself, the last thing you'd be thinking about is what somebody else has to say. So it blocks. the right people from entering your life. If you never tell people what you're building, how can people help you? Right? Like that's not something people can do. Whenever I am having a meeting with someone and I feel this unction to find out more about them, I'll say, how can I serve you? How can I help you move to the next level? And if you have been living in a silo for so long that you can't give me an immediate answer, I know that even though I can fix your problem right now, You're not ready for it to be fixed. You're not going to be open and receptive to that next level of business because you are so stuck in your mind not trusting people. Right. So let me give you a couple of ways to help you rewrite this story. Number one, defy non-negotiables for your clients and collaborators. What are the things that are non-negotiable when you're working with people? For me, I'm not talking to you after 6 p.m. Right. We're closed. The business is closed. I'm not talking to you after 6 p.m. I don't work on Mondays. You can't get on my calendar on a Monday. These are non-negotiables for me. Like what are those things for you in business? When I ran a bakery it was different. Like I definitely wasn't responding to a client pick up after 8 p.m. I wasn't sending you any type of invoice or or an estimate, you will get that the next day. If you sent that in the middle of the night when I first started, I would send it immediately. My phone was always on. And then it got to the point where my life became my business. And so the phone got put on the other side of the room. I'm going to respond to you the next day. Just like in any business, during regular business hours, I'm going respond to you. Outside of that, I'm not. I'm a person. I'm not just the operator of this business. So that's the first thing. Define your non-negotiables for your clients and your collaborators. Number two. Track your energy versus the results in these relationships. Do people leave you drained? Personally, professionally, don't care. Do people leave you drained? If the answer for that is yes, I need you to begin limiting the amount of time you are spending with those who are sucking up all of your energy. Number three, rebuild trust by keeping promises to yourself first. I can't tell you how many women entrepreneurs are so used to putting other people first that even in business they put themselves last. You the boss. You are the boss. And a lot of times when I'm coaching with people I say change it and they're like, but I can't, but I can't. Why can't you? It's your business. You're the boss. Why can't you change these things? You can't, right? And so these are all things that will help you begin to build trust with yourself. as well as others. So when your trust is feeling shaky, your vision, the vision for your business will often feel blurred too. One of the things that my kids say all the time now, they're always yelling no vision. And it's like a hee-hee-haha moment. But no, no, no, no, no, let's talk about that as entrepreneurs. When you have a vision, but you begin to doubt it, you don't believe that you can make it happen. You don't believe that You know enough people to make it happen. You don't believe that. The problem is that you don't believe, period. That's a full sentence. The fact that you don't believe will cause your vision to waver, right? So you might start with fire, but then it's going to burn out and then it dulls and deferred dreams make you hesitant to dream big again. Sometimes the success feels scarier than the failure. That's the vision story that keeps you building safe instead of building bold. Now, CCK, why would you say that? Because that's exactly where I am in this moment. It's been five years since one of the biggest professional and personal There were two very life-changing moments that happened for me within a span of three days. Okay, so within 72 hours, a company that I used to work for sent me a cease and desist. I didn't steal anything from them, but I could not have a business that competed with them within a certain amount of time. And they sent a cease and desist, but just 48 hours, well, actually the day before that happened, my ex-husband and I decided our marriage was not reconcilable, right? And so a professional loss as well as a personal loss happened within three days in August of 2020. And as I am building this business, and I mean it is growing by leaps and bounds, as I'm building out Teach Me How to Bake, a lot of those feelings from 2020 are coming back up for me five years later. Like, I thought I handled it. And as I'm building, I'm beginning to see some themes begin to resurface, right? And I was like, ooh. okay, there's some things happening here. Let's let us dig into this and see what this is. I had moved forward into something called mirror work where you're like talking to yourself, you're like encouraging yourself in the mirror and like really tapping into the feeling of those things you want. But there was a time in my life where all I was doing was shadow work. I just wanted to go find all the negative things and heal them. And this is the combination of shadow and mirror working in tandem. for me where yes, I can continue to tell myself that a future version of me already has this. That a future version of me did the work to build a multi-million dollar company. But the reality is that right now is the version of me that's having to do the work for the future version of me, right? So I'm doing mirror work as well as shadow work. And I want to give you some steps if you find yourself in this place. If you have experienced loss, in your personal or professional life or hell like me at the same time. And you now find yourself in a building season where you are ready to build this foundation. You know everything you need to know. You know what you need to do, but you still hear those small voices in the back of your head about those previous challenges that you've overcome. I want to give you some help on that. Okay. So number one, revisit your why. Remember why you started. Remember what got you here. Number two, dream. in drafts. So write without editing or judgment. This could be in scripting. I'm in something like this Delulu sprint by the Bravo Life. If you don't follow her, please do. I'll make sure I tag it on both YouTube as well as podcast, but absolutely love her. Love the movement that she has right now around manifesting your biggest dreams and living your delusional life. And so she's calling it a delu-lu sprint. But a part of that on her app that she just launched last week, she tells you to script your life on a daily basis. And one of my clients turned good friends sent me a message on Friday and was like, I am trying to script, but my analytical brain says this. How do I script that? And I was like, well, let me tell you what I'm doing. And as I told her what I was doing, I realized that There's probably a whole lot of people who would love to know how to do that. So when we dream in drafts, you are writing out without editing and without judgment what you want your life to look like. If you have difficulty figuring out what it is you should be writing, I want to share an exercise with you. So I want you to imagine that it is the end of your life. You are comfortable somewhere, wherever it is you would like to experience this transition. It is the end of your life and you are looking back over your life. You are looking at the movie of your life. You're looking at the story of your life. You're looking at the highlights. And I want you to breathe in deeply and I want you to allow yourself to see those things as they happen. I want you to see when your children were born. I want you to see when you met the love of your life. I want you to see when you make that first 100K, I want you to see the business grow. I want you to see all of the things. And I want you to just allow yourself to just be in the moment and feel the feels and feel the emotions, feel the weight and the gravity of the moment. And I want you to allow yourself to envision the story of your life. And you're just watching it, right? You're seeing all the highs, the lows, the excitement, the joy, the people who are cheering for you, the ones who have access to you and the ones who don't, right? I want you to really allow yourself the opportunity to daydream about what it is. Don't correct it. Don't stop it. Just let it run. And then as it begins to slow down, I want you to take out a pen and I want you to start writing. And I want you to just write down everything you just saw. I want you to write down who you saw, who was there, who wasn't there. How did you look? How were you dressing? Who were the people you were around? What were you writing in? Where did you live? Where did you vacation? What were the happy moments? Write those down. And I want you to write all these things out. And then once you write them all out, I want you to let that sit. And then a day later, I want you to come back to it. If at any point you think of something else, if another daydream moment pops in your head, write it down. And then I want you to separate these things into categories. I want you to separate them into the following categories. Number one is career. Who are you in the future? Number two is your finances. You need to know your number. You need to know how much money it was costing you to live this life that you just imagined. Number three is health and wellness. Did you see yourself working out? Were you slim? Were you fit? Were you hiking? Were you riding first class? What was going going? Need you to know health and wellness. Your relationships and your social life. Did you see yourself with people? Where did you see yourself with people? Write that down. The next one is going to be your lifestyle and environment. Where did you live? Where were you shopping? Where were you hanging out? Write that down. What did you see? Put them into the lifestyle category. And then lastly, the last one might be a little difficult, but maybe not. Spirituality and mindset. What did you see? So when I allow myself to do this exercise, I saw myself sitting and meditating. I saw myself at a beach meditating. I saw myself on stages leading meditations. Like, what do you see that could go underneath the spirituality and mindset column? Okay. Then once you have these things in the columns, I now want you to look at them and go, all right, if a future version of me, if my brain has allowed me to see these things come to fruition in my minds, I, even though they haven't happened in reality, how do I get there? And I want you to look at all of these things and I want you to do the next best thing. Right? So now we have our to-do list. We know where we're going. And now I need you to look at this list and go... What's next? What's the next best thing? If there's any resistance to things for you, like if something comes up for you, I want you to look at this list and I want you to ask yourself what's coming up for me right now. When I wrote my list out, one of the things that was coming up for me was relationships. And I was like, what's coming up for me right now? What is the resistance around this? And very simply, And this didn't just happen in relationships. This just was kind of me with people in general is that the way that I think, the way that I speak to people, the way that I can, you can tell me something and I can literally solve your problem for you. I've always been able to do that. But now that's something I can do with a whole lot of psychology back to behind me, right? Because of everything that I've learned over the years and that has always been considered as a problem. I internalized it as it was a threat to the people who were around me. And now what I'm understanding is what I consider a threat or what other people consider a threat is really just my superpower. And that's nothing to be threatened by, nor is it anything negative. It's actually something that has turned countless businesses around and made people hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? And so as I'm looking at that, one of the things that I realized is that I have not been in a relationship with anyone who has been able to handle the way in which my brain works. And that's okay. Right? Now that I've settled on this, there's no tea, no shade. That's nothing against them. It's just that who I am as a person has not been handled or considered in the way that I would like it to be. as I moved forward through my life. And so there was a little resistance there, right? When I had to think about that. And I was like, okay, great. Let's now look at what this needs to look like. And how can it be simple for me to put this into words and into something. And then Aaron Pierre goes viral because Teonna Taylor said that man describes her as a cup of tea. And that was it. That did it for me. Like, no, no, no, yeah, you must be careful with your cup of tea. You must treasure it. Like, yes. Literally yes. And I was like, oh, well, that just became really, really simple. And now there's no more resistance around that, right? Like now I understand the embodiment of who my next partner should be and what that should look like. If that is the route I decide to go again. I kind of like me. I love the version of me I've become. And so if that ever takes on a season of growth, then cool. But if it doesn't, also, OK. But I had to dream in drafts first. I had to be able to deal with that. If there's resistance coming up for you, I need you to address the resistance in order to open up. the blessings that are on the way, right? If you are experiencing resistance in the things that you're trying to call in, how can it come to you? We've got to kill it. So as you're dreaming drafts and you begin to write out your delusional life, write out the things that you're manifesting, it's a little bit easier for you to do that if you can separate things into categories and then begin working on the next best thing. That also helps you move a little bit closer. to the vision that you have for yourself, right? So that was number two, dream and draft. And then number three, step outside of your business to spark creativity. Get out of your business in order to find creativity. So whether that is through art, books, nature, or travel, go for long drives. Go study something that's not necessarily in your will house in order to expand your mind and grow, right? Color. Go sit by some water. Go walk through a garden. Like here in Atlanta, well it's not really Atlanta, it's kind of South Atlanta, we have something called Callaway Gardens where you can walk through a butterfly sanctuary, right? And whether you are moving or standing still, nature is moving all around you. And so this allows you to get out of your head and into your body. It allows you to ground yourself. It allows you to soak in the energy of the earth as a opposed to trying to create moments and experiences simply in your brain. when all of these things work together and they begin to circle back for you, they will help you tell your belief story. So let's talk about this last part. The belief story. You've questioned, do I have what it takes? Is this vision worth it? Is it going to happen? Am I going to have the support that I need? Disappointments have happened. You doubt it yourself. And the belief story that you have will begin to whisper instead of being so loud and yelling full of conviction that this isn't going to happen for you. Now is the time for you to begin to choose a new thought. So One of the ways you can do this in rewriting these steps, if you listen to this podcast before, or if you've listened to anything I've said before in any talk, I often tell people, choose a new story, choose a new thought. And so I want to help you do that. So first, craft a new identity statement. Bringing in a new identity for oneself will help you change the belief, right? So this is a bit of mirror work for you instead of shadow work. This is mirror work where you are affirming who you are or who you want to be. So I am the entrepreneur who builds with ease and authority. I'm not a hustling girl and girly, haven't been since 2019. I don't wanna hustle. I don't want to grind. If you say those words to me, I know that we are not equally guilt and I will not pursue anything with you. Right? Because that's just a different level of mentality. Am I hungry? Yeah. Am I building like a beast? Yes. But I'm also doing it with ease and authority. I don't think it has to be hard. I don't believe that hard work will get you where you need to be. There's too many people who have been successful without working hard. Right? So that is a mistaken belief we have been given by other people that we have internalized. So craft a new identity statement. Create a new affirmation for yourself. That is first. Second, anchor in evidence. List three ways you've proven how you figure things out. Easy, right? So as you are working on this new identity, so if we're just going to use my I'm an entrepreneur who builds with ease and authority, I now need to go prove that I've done that. And I have. Number one, I started a food photography business Three days a week for four hours a day and I made over $10,000 a month. I made between 10 and $15,000 a month working less than full time in an entire month. I never worked 40 hours in a month and I was pulling in more than full time pay. Ease. There was ease. in the photography business, right? When I moved into coaching, once again, there was ease. I only had to show up technically one day a week for one hour. So now I'm only working four hours a month and still bringing in that type of money, building with ease and authority, right? I don't have to work hard to make money. I've proven it. I've done it several times. So anchor this into evidence for yourself. List out three ways you've proven you can figure things out. And then my last tip for you to rewrite this step is surround yourself with expanders. Surround yourself with people who normalize big belief. Okay, it is not enough for you to have a tribe of people and y'all just on the same level or you're the smartest one in the room. If you're trying to grow your business and move to the next level, if you want to jump timelines, babe, this is not the time to play. All right. You want to be around expanders. You want to be around people with big vision. You want to be around people who do not think whatever it is you say is crazy. Right? I have a friend who just moved into entrepreneurship. This is her first month of being an entrepreneur after being in the education field for almost 30 years. And when she was, I was like, what do you want? Cause what you're telling me right now, don't even feel like you, what do you actually want? and that she began to tell me and she was like, I know that sounds crazy. And I said, nope, that sounds aligned. That sounds real normal for you. I would expect nothing less. Actually, I think you're still minimizing it and it should be bigger. You need to be around people who tell you, babe, that's not big enough. You need to be around the people who are going to tell you, you not doing enough. Not the ones who tell you that you're too much. Not the ones who tell you that you're not giving them enough of self. You want to be around people who not only see you for who you are, but they see the vision that you have crafted for yourself. Big belief, big vision. Those are the people that you want to surround yourself with. In closing, the thing I think will land this all for us is old stories don't have to define your future at all. They don't. Every story can be rewritten, whether it's financial. whether it's the confidence you have in yourself, whether it's the trust you have in yourself and other people, the vision you have for yourself or your business, and the belief system that you have for yourself. When you heal and rewrite these narratives, your business doesn't just grow. It grows from power, clarity, and alignment. You will literally heal yourself and grow your business at the same time. So here's my challenge. Which story are you carrying right now? Write it down. And then ask yourself, what's one new story I'm ready to step into this week? What's one new thought I can embody? What's one thing I can embody this week that's going to help me move to the next level? if you're re-ready to write these stories for good and build a business from alignment instead of survival, I love to connect, you can DM me, you can go over and join my newsletter. Just go to kimberlyihouston.com / email, but we can have this conversation. I want you to start building a new story today.