“FREE Jen and Elke’s “150 Trending Zazzle Niches and Designs” Guide”
Today we have a treat for you! We sat down and spoke with Gloria Zhang, an incredible relationship coach and creator of The Inner Child Work Podcast. Gloria does inner child work with people who are extremely successful in their businesses but struggle in other aspects of their life, such as building healthy relationships. Today, she’s here to talk with us about how inner child work is actually relevant to business, why healing those wounds matters, and how you’re self-sabotaging without even realizing it.
But before we dive right in, let us introduce ourselves in case this is your first visit. Welcome to The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast. We’re your hosts, Jen and Elke Clarke. We are a mother and daughter team that started Zazzle e-commerce businesses over 10 years ago and have sold over 15 million dollars worth and counting of products on Zazzle.
The Creative and Ambitious Entrepreneur Podcast is for you, the creative. We share actionable steps that you can take to make money in your e-commerce business. In each episode, we will take you one step closer to achieving freedom with your time, location, and finances.
We believe that a profitable e-commerce business is what opens the doors for you to start living your dream life if you work smarter, not harder, use the right tools and follow the proven roadmap. We’re here to give you the tools you need to make your dream life happen. Let’s get started!
Elke: “How does this relate to Zazzle? It relates to Zazzle because what we’ve noticed with our clients that take our coaching program and do our 5 Strategies™, we’ve noticed that…for some reason, some people do much better than others. And when we sort of catch them in our mindset coaching call, part of the Profit by Design Academy that we have, we realized that a lot of the work that has to be done is actually on the mindset, and where does that start? In the inner child.”
Mindset is a core ingredient to building a business. Without the right mindset, you won’t see the progress you’re looking for, and you won’t understand why. While mindset is a thing of the present, it starts in the past; hence, inner child work. If you have lingering wounds you haven’t yet healed, they’ve overshadowed your mindset ever since childhood whether you knew it or not. A big part of getting in the right mindset is going back in time to examine those wounds.
Gloria: “One of the things I teach people is there are actually four main inner child wounds that come with you in childhood. These are called the abandonment wound, the trust wound, the guilt wound, and the neglect wound.”
Following are the main inner child wounds.
A wound that stems from being abandoned or left behind somehow in your childhood.
A wound that stems from someone breaking your trust in the past.
A wound that manifests as feeling guilty when you achieve success or happiness.
A wound whose source can be traced back to having your physical or emotional needs neglected in childhood.
Self-sabotage, both in relationships and in business, often starts in these wounds. Inner child work is about diving deep into your past to find your own wounds and begin healing them. This sounds like a good thing—and it is—but it isn’t an easy, painless process. Gloria doesn’t sugarcoat it…
Gloria: “Some of the layers can be very, very difficult because we are looking at some of the most painful and vulnerable places in your life…Oftentimes it takes hitting rock bottom at some point to really acknowledge that, okay, this is an area that I want to fix.”
Inner child work isn’t simple. It’s a complex, non-linear, often painful process to unravel the darkest parts of your past. Ultimately, however, this is crucial to getting in the proper mindset to grow your business the way you want to!
For example, say you have a goal to put aside a certain amount of income, but the money keeps disappearing. You can’t seem to get a grip on your spending no matter what you do, and it’s frustrating you. Why can’t you change your mindset to reflect your goals?
This is what happened to Wendy, one of Gloria’s clients. Gloria shares that even though Wendy was a successful realtor who originally came to her for relationship coaching, they discovered through inner child work that her childhood wounds were also affecting her ability to save.
As Gloria says: “She couldn’t hold onto the money and had no idea that this was also related to her childhood. Growing up, her parents, who were immigrants, never let her spend that extra two dollars on the nicer dress or to get the drinks. And so she had this internalized belief that she’s not supposed to hold on to money, which led to self-sabotage. And so the same routes to her relationship problems were also the same routes to her money problems.”
Gloria: “I will say…what you’re doing right now is just as hard if not harder than doing the healing. Sabotaging is pretty hard, too. Working for years and not being able to reach your goal because you don’t believe that you can have it is pretty hard, too. So I like to reframe this as, “What kind of hard work do you want?” Do you want that temporary hard, that temporary discomfort of looking within and finally fixing those wounds? Or do you want that long term hard where you’re just going to live a life knowing that what you want is always on the other side?”
As uncomfortable and intimidating as inner child work can be, yes, it is worth it. Without doing the work to confront your wounds, you won’t heal from them, and your mindset will always be skewed by the scars left behind. Childhood wounds affect your self-image, which in turn affects your ability to truly sell yourself and your business to others. It affects how you interact with customers. It affects what risks you take. Without doing the inner child work, you’ll always be hindered by those blocks. As nice as the comfort zone is, you need to step out of it if you want to be successful.
Jen: “You need to be comfortable being uncomfortable because if you are uncomfortable in a situation, it means you’re growing and you’re progressing. If you’re comfortable, you’re just staying in the same space. But…being comfortable in the same space is actually stunting your growth.”
Nothing is more detrimental to a business mindset than the idea that comfort equals success. If you get comfortable where you are and stay there, you’ll stop progressing; you’ll never be able to grow. Businesses aren’t meant to reach a certain point and become static; you want to always be growing, and in order to grow, you need to keep stepping past the point of comfort. That includes entering into the discomfort of inner child work.
If you want to expand your knowledge of inner child work and learn how to start healing those wounds, be sure to listen to Gloria’s podcast, The Inner Child Podcast. You can also connect with her on her Instagram, @bygloriazhang!
You can do this! Don’t be afraid to get in there and do the inner child work—achieving your goals could depend on it.
Are you ready to turn your Zazzle hobby into a proper e-commerce business? The Profit by Design Academy® Coaching Program is what you need! Get the proper roadmap and hands-on support to accelerate your Zazzle business and make your dream of achieving passive income a reality!
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Jen and Elke Clarke are a mother-daughter duo that empowers women entrepreneurs to make money online. Through courses and coaching, Jen and Elke help women (and men) become successful creative entrepreneurs on Zazzle and e-commerce. Combined Jen and Elke have sold over 15 million dollars-worth of products, and earned over $1.5 million combined through their businesses on Zazzle. Jen and Elke have influenced and transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide with their free content, paid and private coaching.
They are international, award-winning authors. Click the links to purchase their books through Amazon: Earn Around The World and Create Online and Grow Rich.
Jen and Elke Clarke have been featured in Yahoo Finance as TOP 5 e-commerce coaches.
