Today, I want to talk about the hardest lesson I had to learn when I started my business. 

If you’ve listened to the Taking It Personally podcast, you’ll know that I learned the hard way about the personal growth required to build a business. I talk about this as the need to Build The Business OWNER in order to Build The Business. This focus on your own development - personal, leadership and mindset - is every bit as critical as the external, tactical work of running a business.

I want to dive deeper into one specific topic here that I haven’t addressed in detail before. It’s something that can wreak havoc both personally and professionally and has affected clients, friends, and mentors I’ve worked with. Maybe it’s touched you too, whether you’ve realised it already or not, so, let’s talk about it.

My Backstory (in a nutshell!)

Before we get into it, a quick introduction for those of you who are new here: I started my first business in 2016—an eco-friendly stationery company. I was completely new to entrepreneurship, but I was eager and ready to learn everything I could.

However, my focus was entirely on the external aspects of business—marketing, sales, systems—without realising the toll starting a completely new way of life would take on me personally. Starting and growing a business kicked up a whirlwind of emotions I wasn’t prepared for—self-doubt, fear of letting people down, shame, and being incredibly hard on myself. This inner turmoil, a mixture of inward and outward emotions, is something I’ve since learned is a common experience for many entrepreneurs.

Now, as an entrepreneur trainer, my goal is to help other online business owners avoid learning the hard way like I did. There's a lot of talk in the online space about overcoming limiting beliefs, and rightly so, but today I want to focus on something that tripped me up for a long time and, in my experience, many others struggle with too, and that’s IMPATIENCE.

The Trap of Impatience

I’ve touched on this topic before, especially when it comes to the frustration of how long it can take to see results from business actions. Entrepreneurship often demands that we live in a discomfort zone—the space between taking action and waiting for results with no guarantees about what those results will be. That’s a tough space to live in, and at the root of that discomfort is impatience.

Impatience is such a sneaky issue because, unlike self-doubt or fear, it can be dressed up as something positive. You can easily recognise self-doubt as a limitation, but impatience often hides behind ambition or drive. We applaud ourselves for being driven and wanting to achieve things quickly, but impatience can be a stumbling block disguised as a motivator.

It’s similar to how perfectionism can masquerade as a desire for excellence. There’s nothing wrong with drive or ambition—in fact, they’re wonderful traits to fuel action. But when impatience takes over, it can lead you to believe that something is wrong with your business, or worse, with you. And that’s where the real damage begins.

How Impatience Held Me Back

For me, impatience showed up in several ways:

1. Being too hard on myself – I constantly felt like I should have known things I hadn’t yet learned.

2. Unrealistic expectations – I had high hopes without any experience or proof to back them up.

3. Giving up too soon – When things didn’t happen fast enough, I would abandon ideas and move on, thinking they were failures.

4. Constantly changing my mind – I chopped and changed my approach based on impatience, not fact.

5. Letting external influences dictate my actions – I allowed marketing trends and others’ opinions to steer my decisions, rather than trusting my own judgement.

6. Investing in the wrong things – Out of impatience, I often threw money at “solutions” that felt like they promised fast results but weren’t the right fit for my business.

Impatience isn’t talked about in detail nearly enough, but it creates just as much chaos as limiting beliefs or self-doubt. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Reframing Patience

If you’re in the same boat, ask yourself these questions:

• Are you being impatient with where you are in your business right now?

• What would patience look like for you? What feelings would patience bring that might support more consistent and focused action?

• Is there something in your mindset that you’ve dressed up as a positive—for example, something you’re excusing as ambition, drive or other attribute, but is actually holding you back?

And to be clear: there’s no shame in this. That’s why I don’t like calling impatience a “flaw.” We all have tendencies that can hold us back, but it’s recognising them that is the first step toward reframing them so that they can help and not hinder you in your work for business growth.

Patience doesn’t mean resigning yourself to the idea that success will take forever. Instead, it’s about creating a different experience from the one that’s currently slowing you down. Patience allows for trust in the process, which is essential for taking the right actions at the right time without constantly second-guessing yourself.

Building the Business Owner: Tackling Impatience and More

If you want to grow a heart-led, impact-driven business with more courage, confidence, and less impatience, then I believe the best thing you can do is invest in entrepreneur training. If you’ve been in business for a while, know the mechanics, but just aren’t seeing the results you expected, check out my Build the Business Owner (BTBO) Entrepreneur Training programme to see if you agree that it’s for you.

In BTBO, I’ve pulled together the best of everything I’ve created over the years to help entrepreneurs like you nail the difference between doing a lot of work that leads nowhere to doing the right work that drives business growth. The programme covers confidence in visibility, marketing, promotion, pricing, and sales but, more importantly, it’s about stepping into your role as a self-led CEO—and not staying stuck as an overwhelmed service provider with a very long to-do list.

Even as a solopreneur, you need to learn how to lead your business with confidence and focus. BTBO will give you the tools and training you need to meet your aspirations and achieve your goals without feeling like they’re always just out of reach. It’s a programme primarily about empowerment, designed to help you make decisions and trust those decisions. If you’re looking for someone to tell you step-by-step what to do, this isn’t the right programme for you (and do you really want that for your business?), but if you want to feel confident and courageous in your business decisions and are ready to claim your space in your industry, then it’s worth getting on the no-obligation waiting list so that you’re notified when enrolment opens.

Final Thoughts

Impatience is just one of many challenges entrepreneurs face, but it’s one that often flies under the radar. The good news is that once you recognise it, you can work with it—rather than have it work against you. So take a moment to reflect on where impatience might be showing up in your business, and how you can shift your mindset toward patience, trust, and confident action.

If you have any questions or want to book a no-pressure chat to talk about the programme, feel free to DM me over on Instagram at @elleturner_writer. I’d love to hear from you!

Elle xo

AI transparency: Using an original script, written by Elle for the Taking It Personally podcast, ChatGPT created the first draft of this blog post! Very modern :)

For solopreneurs, or business owners with 1 or 2 of a team, who want  to show up and share their message confidently and consistently to attract kindred soul clients, a like-hearted community and make sales.

Enrolment opens soon for Build the Business Owner, but you can grab your spot on the (no-obligation) waiting list NOW https://elleturner.me/btbo-waitlist-join

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