In this conversational YouTube presentation, Sarah Williams shares a personal story about experiencing intense self‑doubt at a recent networking event in Newport Beach, California. She describes how feelings of not being “fancy enough,” not young or skinny enough, and trying to dress in a way that didn’t feel authentic amplified her internal self‑esteem struggle, even though she knows she can hold her own in business discussions. Using that anecdote as a springboard, Sarah explains that self‑doubt surfaces in many concrete ways that sabotage women‑focused entrepreneurs. She outlines eight specific patterns she has observed in her own 13‑year business journey, beginning with underpricing products, and invites the audience to recognize and acknowledge each pattern in themselves. Throughout the talk she maintains a supportive, conversational tone, asks for real‑time chat responses, and emphasizes that awareness is the first step toward change, even though she is not a therapist. The video is aimed primarily at female business owners who may relate to the described self‑doubt triggers.
Chapters
Good morning. Good morning. Happy Monday morning. It feels good to be back in the office today. I've been traveling quite a bit the last 2 weeks, and I will be traveling again next week. But today I want to talk about something that, you know, I had this huge kind of realization this last week, and I want to tell you my story behind this. But it's around self-doubt. And I don't know, let me see if I got a copy of my book. Let me know in the chat if you have read my book. Um, the, the, the first title of this book was going to be called From Self-Doubt to Self-Made, and we changed the title multiple times along the way. But in my book I talk a lot about the self-doubt that I have faced over, you know, probably my lifetime, but I really focus on it, you know, in the business. And so I was at an event this week out— last week out in California. My eye— listen, I'm not crying. This eye has watered for like 4 days straight. I don't know. I don't know. But it's watered for 4 days. I'm not crying. You're crying. I was out at an event in Newport Beach, California last week, and I was getting packed up on Sunday and I was trying to talk myself out of going. I was having just a lot of feelings about it. I've been to this event before. It was not like— I don't know. I was, I was having a lot of self-doubt. Let me just start there so that it makes it easier for you. I was having a lot of self-doubt. and I was trying to talk myself out of going, um, because in this room, um, people are super fancy, and I felt like maybe I didn't dress nice enough. I felt like maybe I wasn't young enough, I wasn't skinny enough, uh, there's a lot of health and wellness coaches in this room, and I just was having all of this self-doubt around who I was and who I was in this room. And I didn't have the greatest experience last time I went to this event. And I just, I had already, I had paid for the two, the two events, so I'd already paid for it. And I was like, I don't want to waste my money. I'm just going to go. But I was trying to talk myself out of going. Does this sound familiar to anybody? Like having self-doubts about who you are? And I know it's weird because I show up here every week and do my thing. But it's different in person. It's different when you have to sit face to face in this room and you feel a lot of self-doubt. And it's not about any self-doubt in my business or what I've built or what I've grown. It was just internally, like I wasn't— I felt not good enough in a personal way, not in a business way. I can go toe to toe with a lot of people, with almost everybody in that room on business. Right? And so it was this self, like, esteem issue that I was dealing with that I dealt with a lot, um, in my, you know, business growth. And so I started to really understand that when we have self-doubt, um, it shows up in a lot of different ways, and it really holds us back in our business. And it held me back in that room that first day. I tried to dress up real nice and be somebody I wasn't. And I feel like I dress nice. Okay. Like, let's not get that twisted. I feel like I dress nice. But here's, here's the difference. I'm going to wear, I'm going to wear jeans. I'm going to be comfortable. I'm going to either probably distressed. That's where I feel comfortable. Because let me tell you why I wear distressed jeans. This is funny. It's not because they're hip and cool. It's because I get hot all the time and it cools me off. It cools me off. But so I was like, I was going through my closet trying to pack for this. I was pulling dresses, I was pulling slacks, I was pulling suits, stuff I do not wear on a regular basis. And I thought, okay, I'm going to pack all this. And then at the last minute, I went and grabbed like regular stuff that I would wear. And so the first day I dressed really nice, but I felt uncomfortable the whole time. I felt uncomfortable. And by the second, by the second day, I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna go and be me. I'm gonna wear jeans that don't have holes in them so they look nicer, um, but I'm just gonna be me. I'm gonna dress the way I feel most comfortable in, and I'm gonna let this go that I have to be somebody that I'm not. And when I did that, I was open to receiving what was happening in that room a whole lot better. And so I thought, okay, I just need to be me and be open to what's coming. And I'm going to be me to a flaw. And I started to think about things that give us self-doubt in our business and how it holds us back. Because let's be honest here, 99% of my audience is women. And I do have some men in my membership, in my audience. And if you're out there, you might relate to this too. But as a woman, I know our biggest hang-up is our self-doubt. We self-sabotage ourselves in so many ways. And so I got to thinking about how this shows up for us in business and what is it sabotaging for us in business. And if we can recognize it, like I was recognizing on day one that this was sabotaging the way I was showing up in this room And, and so what I, what I want is, I want us to do is let's take a look at these things that I wrote down about how we, how self-doubt shows up in our business. And let's just acknowledge that this is happening to us, because if we can acknowledge that this is happening to us, then we can work on changing that. But if we can't acknowledge that this is, this is what is happening to us, we don't have a way out of it. And then we start to spiral spiral in lots of different, different ways. And so I wrote down like the top 8 things, and these are, these are like the things that I had self-doubt about and the way that they affected my business. So when I say these things, I'm not saying you need, you need to recognize this and you need to stop this. I'm saying this was me, and I worked really, really hard over the last 13 years to push these out. But then something will happen, like me being in that room last week, and all of a sudden I'm this little girl that doubts herself and has self-esteem issues again. And I did not like the way that made me feel, okay? And so let's start with these, because— and, and as I'm saying these, I want you to put 'that's me' in the chat just so that I can acknowledge that you're struggling with this, and then let's talk about just acknowledging. I don't have the answers for all this. I'm not a therapist, but I think if we recognize these things in ourselves, we have the ability to make changes for them. Okay, so let's start with number 1: you underprice your products. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick on Amanda for a minute. I, I gave her a little bit of tough love in Launch Your Box over the weekend about her fear of private
